The War of Flames
by James Golen
Summary: The sequel to Children of the War, Part 3. Six years after Sozin's Comet, Azula finally awakens from her madness, to find she is going to be used as a figurehead. But she has a nasty surprise in store for her puppetmasters. AU, Ty Lokka, Complete.
1. The Awakening

**Alright. Starting from scratch (not really) and running headlong toward the end (For real this time). The War of Flames is the fourth and final segment of the Children of the War series, set in the Children/verse. Those who have kept up with the story thus far will know all the rules apply. For those who are new; the War of Flames takes place 6 years after the events of Sozin's Comet, which in Children/verse was three years later than in canon. Thus, characters in the War of Flames will be 9 years older than they were in Canon. Jeong Jeong did not desert from the Fire Nation, which was a significant factor in how the world was fundamentally different.**

**Cultural changes in this world include things like the fact that the Fire Nation is three countries all bowing knee to one authority figure in the form of the Fire Lord. All of these countries have distinct values, and throughout Fire Nation history have often been at war with themselves or each other. They also each speak a different dialect of their National language, Huojian. Language is also different elsewhere in the world: the lingua franca of the setting is Tianxia, which developed in the East Continent (Earth Kingdoms, natch), but other languages like Yqanuac for the Tribesmen and Whalesh for the... well, Whalesh... also exist. The East Continent is also devolving back into its usual, not-at-war-for-their-continued-survival mode, as an extremely loose confederation of kingdoms, duchies, tribes, juntas, and even, and I gasp to say, _republics_. Thus, Aang has his work cut out just sorting out the affairs of the East.**

**Other changes: Shamans are individuals who may or may not be benders (usually not) but have access to, and the ability to communicate with, spirits and their world. The Avatar is by nature a shaman and a bender, having the additional capability, unique to him, to send anybody he or she wills from one world to the other, as though he were a spirit. Iroh can do this too, but only because he's Iroh. Do not argue with the Irohness. There are also some what might be considered tweaks to the nature of the various bending styles and what they are capable of, where they originate, etcetera, but that will be incidental at worst.**

**While most people paired up in familiar form, Suki retired to Kiyoshi Island with Chit Sang. Not as gross as you think: She's 36, here. Ty Lee took her spot in the Gaang, and was the first of the new airbenders. She's also married to Sokka. Oh, Ty Lokka, whatever shall we do? Toph married Teo, who was turned into an airbender via Aang's spiritbending (because energybending is a different thing completely, goddamn it!). Are we caught up? I can never remember how much I mangled the world at this point. I'll have to play it by ear.**

**The end is nigh. It's Azula's story now. From now on, we're watching her get some sense bludgeoned into her, and seeing just what happened to make Azula so... Azula. This is plotted to take place over the course of perhaps 24ish chapters, and due to the nascent semester and the brutal writer's block I'm facing, it will probably only be updated once a week. If I manage to hit a good streak and finish the story, then it'll update faster, but until then, no promises.**

**tl;dr? The War of Flames starts now.**

* * *

Rain beat against the broad surface of the pan hat, the sky darkened but still tinged with red light as the sun peeked shyly between the clouds and the horizon. He was kneeling, running his fingers along the wet, charred wood. His fingers were considered by most around here to be dark, but still stood out starkly against the blackness. He rubbed the oily smut 'twixt his fingertips, bringing it to his nose for a sniff. It smelled like burnt wood. He tapped it to his tongue. Tasted like burnt wood, too.

"My lord, are you sure this is the place?" the retainer said from the road. It was well tended, as could be expected for a nation considering itself one of the greatest in the world. Azuli did have their pride. He rose up from his squat and began to walk along the grounds again. Well, considering how little of the house was remaining, it was all grounds. Only a few of the strongest wooden beams remained upright. Blackened, of course. The fire which tore through this place burnt very hot, and from the look of the collapse, burnt very fast.

Not a natural flame.

"I am quite sure," he said, not bothering to rein in his artificial Azuli accent. When he'd learned the language, it was with an accent. So when he spoke it, it tended to come out with that sultry curl on its 'R's and breathy 'H'es.

He tipped up his pan hat, letting the rain start drifting sideways into his short beard. Bright eyes scanned the grounds once again, pulling at what would no doubt in a few years become laugh-lines. He wasn't laughing now. He didn't like to miss things, but unlike a certain Fire Lord's wife, he couldn't expect to take everything in at a glance. He took his time. He moved into the ruins again. The retainer, muttering a long, superstitious curse in that old, Azuli Huojian, followed. He paused, in a part of the house which would have been the kitchens. He stooped down again, and fished something out from under ashes and rubble. A quick dip into naturally red water revealed the burnt bones, probably from an arm. Human. A quick glance, showing that the retainer was nowhere that the man could watch, he turned back to the rubble, and reached forward with his hands. The soaked ashes and smut peeled away, the water moving it away and showing a blackened skeleton. Fat. He sighed, as the retainer reached his side.

"Agni's blood, what happened here?" the retainer said.

"Assassination," came the answer. "What is your name?"

"Lord Baihu?" the retainer asked. Baihu turned, fixing blue eyes on the young man's amber ones.

"I can't just call you 'you there', or 'servant'. What's your name?"

"Wei, sir."

"Don't call me sir," Baihu said. "I'm not used to it."

"Whatever you say, sir," Wei said. "Did you know these people?"

Baihu looked over into what would have been the central room. Wide and spacious, it was almost completely crumbled into nothingness. He ran his hands along the wood. The thick beams here were still a bit warm. Whatever burned this place burned it fast, and only was put out in the last few minutes of rain, as he approached the house. Baihu scratched the back of his neck, under the broad pan hat. His eyes, keened from his youth hunting, spotted the slightest glimmer, sunlight reflecting off metal. He moved to it, plucking the blade carefully out of the mud. He could see bones near it, where they'd tumbled into what would have been a corner. The handle had burned away, but Baihu recognized the workmanship of this white-metaled, uniquely crafted blade. Formerly unique, anyway. Six years had changed much.

"This was forged by Piandao," Baihu said. He knelt in the mud next to the blackened bones. "The master has fallen."

"Sir?" Wei asked.

"Don't call me sir," he said quietly, painfully. "My name is Sokka," Sokka looked at the blade again. There was something on it... a discoloration. Sokka peeled it off with a fingernail, tapping it to his tongue. Metallic, not surprising, but he knew the taste of blood better than most would expect. Piandao managed to get a bit of whoever killed him. The thought of that made Sokka smirk a bit. He turned to Wei. "Scribe a message, Wei. Tell my wife I won't be going to the Capitol. Not right away. I have a feeling that I'm going to be taking a trip to Grand Ember."

* * *

Chapter 1: The Awakening

* * *

She watched him. Azula made no point of contention that she was watching the Tribesman who shared the carriage with her. That he either didn't seem to notice or else not care galled her somewhat. She was supposed to be a symbol of fear. If she couldn't intimidate one barbarian, then what good was she? Her golden eyes drew down as they moved in silence, until the silence began to crystallize and chafe.

"I am not going to trust you," Azula said, breaking the silence. The Tribesman, casually as you please, turned to her.

"Why would you?"

"Stop doing that."

"Stop doing what, Lady Azula?" he asked.

"Being... Just shut up," Azula said, regretting her decision to engage the barbarian in conversation. Infuriatingly, the Tribesman smirked, and leaned back against the wall opposite her. "And stop doing that!"

"Doing what, Lady Azula?"

Azula seethed. She hated that he was so... existing. A part of her wanted to just tear apart that energy within her and blast the arrogant underling into dust. Another part of her, a part she didn't really understand, just seemed to shake her head slowly, with an exhausted sigh. It was bad enough that she had to spend time around this heathen, but she couldn't even take out her aggravation on him. It was unfair.

"You haven't asked where we're going," the Tribesman said, his eyes still closed, casual as you please. Azula scowled.

"I wasn't aware that hostage-takers were allowed to tell their victims where they would be held," she said.

"You're not a hostage," the barbarian answered, eyes opening. He paused a moment, then shrugged. "Well, you're not my hostage, anyway. I can't say the same for... Long Feng, was it? I'm really going to have to ask a few questions about him."

"So you are going to use me after all?" Azula asked. Now, it was the Tribesman's turn to scowl.

"If you aren't willing to meet me half way, this trip is going to be very uncomfortable," he offered. She crossed her arms under her breasts, which had the unfortunate effect of thrusting them up toward him. They hadn't been so... large... during her coronation.

"Why should I meet you half way to anywhere?"

"Because I'm probably one of the only people in the world who hasn't decided to summarily kill you, or else keep you as a puppet," he suddenly smirked. "You don't seem to be one to accept strings being tied to you, and sticking my hand up your butt would just get me killed, so I think I'd rather see you standing on your own."

"Sticking your..." Azula began, and the Tribesman blanched a bit.

"That... didn't come out right."

Azula fixed the now squirming barbarian with a gaze of molten gold. "Who do you work for?"

"Technically? Grand Ember Medical, Psychiatric, and Hospice Services," he offered. Her glare turned withering. "That Easterner also... made an offer that I didn't have an option of refusing."

"Money? You did this for money? I didn't think you'd reached the point in your culture where you could appreciate greed," she said derisively.

"Not money," he shook his head. "The money was just... keeping up appearances. He made it known that if I didn't cooperate, he'd go after my sister."

"Really? You're going to become a wanted criminal for that?" she asked, disbelieving.

"I love my sister," he said simply.

Azula tapped her fingers against her arm briefly, her eyes narrowing. Then, she leaned back, giving an image of relaxation. She was anything but. "So. Where are we going, barbarian?"

"I know you're trying to rile me," he said. He shook his head. "We're staying on Grand Ember for a few days, since the Fire Lord is..."

"He is not the Fire Lord, I am!" Azula snapped.

"QUIETLY!" The Tribesman whispered urgently, his very dark blue eyes glancing up toward where the driver would be sitting. After a moment of tension, he leaned forward. "You're not supposed to be active. If they find out you're awake... I don't know what they'd do. Right. Zuko, if you prefer. He's going to have airships over all the trade lanes for the next week or so. So the plan was to bluff him into thinking you'd slipped past, and he'll expand the search, and we always follow behind them as the ring grows."

"Where?" she asked again, pointedly and simply.

"First stop is Jang Hui," he said, gesticulating as though pointing out something on a map. "After that, we hop islands, staying out of sight until we reach Betla. I'm supposed to have you... well, able to speak and take direction, by then."

"Really? So who is going to be my escort?" she asked.

"The more people move with you, the more obvious you'll be. I'm sure you're aware of that," he shook his head. "I'd like to keep this between us, but the Firemaster and what's-his-name were adamant that they have somebody they trusted involved. He's going to meet us before we leave Grand Ember."

"Do _you_ trust him?"

"As far as I can throw him," he answered. "And from the looks of him, I wouldn't be able to throw him very far."

She tapped her fingers again. They didn't clack the way she wanted them too. The nails weren't long enough, nor sharpened the way she usually kept them. It didn't occur to her that every time she wasn't actively speaking, she was nibbling on them. "You're not very good at plans, are you?"

"I prefer improving lives to plotting out ways to end them, Lady Azula," he said. Azula scowled again. This was going to be a very long trip.

* * *

An old man looked up, his rheumy eyes clearing as they looked to the west. His was a face suited to expressions of horror, a face painted with a lifetime of fear. He had avoided the War, or rather, the War had studiously avoided him. But still, there was that terror. Now, though, that traumatized face pulled into a smile. Not any human smile. No, this was as though some monstrous thing were playing at understanding human expression. It was a mockery of a smile.

The old man stood, his posture ram-rod straight despite decades of anxious stooping. His head tilted to the side, as he took in a hard breath of air, smelling the sensation he felt to the west. It was a familiar smell. Just as the pain that old body felt was a familiar pain. A good pain. It meant he still had a foothold in the Mortal. That smile stretched a little wider.

"Looks like my old Client has awakened," the old man said. But it was not a voice of an old man, and it spoke in no mortal tongue. He had long been a shaman, and had been careful, but not careful enough. Many dangerous things walked the Spirit world. Some of them were... curious. "This might just prove... edifying."

And the old shaman began to walk to the west, shouldering his belongings. Such fear. Such delicious fear.

* * *

The airship hadn't even tied off when the Fire Lord jumped over the rail and landed hard on the ground. A cry of alarm came from the airship, but Zuko wasn't going to wait however long it took them to moor the craft. He was already days late. But considering he traveled half-way around the planet in a few days... it was almost certain that he'd set some sort of aerial speed record; the only time he'd traveled farther in one span was those days leading up to Sozin's Comet. Shrugging the jolt out of his knees and shoulders, he began striding away from the impromptu landing, in the grounds of the hospital. If Wan Shi Tong was wrong, then he had just revealed a vital family secret. He doubted the Spirit would be wrong.

"Fire Lord, we were unaware that you would be visiting," the administrator, a lanky, balding man named Yasuke, said as he quickly fell in beside his monarch. "Although, I'm beginning to see a pattern."

"Where is she, Yasuke?" Zuko snapped. Yasuke's amber eyes flicked away for a moment, then he sighed.

"What have you heard, Fire Lord?"

"You tell me first," Zuko said, navigating toward the restricted wing. Ahead, there was a commotion. A man in red armor staggered back against the wall at an intersection, before pulling himself back up the wall and vanishing out of sight. Some truly harsh language was emanating from that corner, directly in Zuko's path.

"There was... an incident," Yasuke said quietly.

"She escaped," Zuko said, scowling.

Yasuke shook his head vigorously. "No, Fire Lord. Not escaped. She was stolen."

Zuko halted, turning to him. He ran a finger along the edge of his beard as he turned that distinction over in his head. "What do you mean, stolen?" Zuko asked. "You _are_ talking about the deposed Fire Lord Azula, aren't you?"

"I am."

"And she didn't escape."

"Stolen, sir."

"...Could you walk me through this again," Zuko said, palming his face, for a moment obscuring the scar over the left side of his head.

"–and your mother was too!" a shout came from the hallway, in an obvious Azuli accent. Yasuke gave an uncomfortable shrug.

"There were men. They broke in two nights ago, and took her."

"And you're sure she had no hand in this?" Zuko pressed.

"Fire Lord, I'm not sure if you're truly aware how dire your sister's mental state is. She is unable to even feed herself under her own volition," Yasuke said, as though explaining it a third time would somehow make it sink in. Zuko didn't like the man's tone. Inwardly, he counted to ten to prevent six years worth of stress from making him do something... Ozai-ish. "Doctor Sowatri has been working tirelessly to..."

"Doctor who?" Zuko interjected.

"Sowatri, that Tribesman."

"Tribesmen don't have surnames," Zuko said. He heard a fist connect with a face, ahead. "And what is going on over there?"

"Somebody was found breaking into a restricted area," Yasuke said, with a dismissive wave. "Trust me, if Azula was coming back to her senses, Ked would know."

Zuko scowled. Then, he started walking again, and Yasuke had the choice of either keeping up, or being left behind. In a few moments, Zuko reached that intersection. Two firebenders were holding a man's arms, while a third was beating him with a truncheon. Despite being drastically outnumbered, the pinioned man seemed to be the least damaged of the four. "What is the meaning of this?"

The man raised his head, and a wide, goofy, familiar grin came to his face. Zuko's eyes went wide as gold met blue. "Tui La, am I glad to see you," Sokka Baihu said, his voice betraying none of that he was just getting beaten by a stick. "You wouldn't believe the hospitality I've gotten here. I wouldn't recommend it."

Zuko stared at the Tribesman, his once traveling-companion, and possibly the only person in the world who could keep up with him in a sword fight. He stared flatly. He stared long. And he could feel a vein pulsing in the side of his head. "What are you doing here, Sokka?"

"I had a hunch," Sokka said brightly. "But then I got jumped by the goon squad and I wasn't able to see if she was..."

"Leave us," Zuko said. The firebenders nodded. Mai was right. Removing the death's-head masks from the outfit of the Imperial Firebenders did much to humanize them. They began to move past, dragging the Tribesman. "He stays here."

"But... Fire Lord, he was..."

"He stays," Zuko said again.

"He could be an assassin," one of the men at Sokka's shoulder offered. Zuko very calmly swept his hand in a circular gesture, and all sets of eyes but two went wide as lightning danced along the path it traced.

"He stays," Zuko said one final time. And all knew it was final. The guards gave swift bows, then departed, leaving Sokka to work the kinks out of his back and shoulders. Zuko scowled at the obviously insane polymath. "One of these days, a stunt like this is going to get you killed."

"Fire Lord, is it wise to..."

"He knows," Zuko interrupted.

"Azula's loose, isn't she?" Sokka asked simply. He paused for a moment, working the inside of his mouth, then reached in and pulled out a tooth, staring at it suspiciously. "That's not my tooth. How'd that _get_ in there?"

Yasuke ignored Sokka's second comment, and motioned onward. "We took every reasonable precaution," Yasuke said. "But then again, we were watching for an escape attempt from within, not without."

Zuko was silent for a moment. Sokka leaned over, and spoke in his own tongue. "_So, how's being Fire Lord suiting you?_"

Zuko rolled his eyes. "_There are days I wish Azula had just killed me during the duel,_" he said, with an exasperated exhale. "_Between every delegation from Ember getting more and more aggressive and demanding, to the resurgence of banditry in the countryside of Sozu and Azul, it's gotten to the point where I would almost welcome an open, honest attempt on my life. This is like being nibbled to death by turtle-ducks. I am twenty five years old, and I already have grey hair!_" Zuko swept away some of the hair over his withered ear, showing the Tribesman that he was not joking. It wasn't much grey hair, but it was there.

"_That's rough, buddy,_" Sokka offered, rubbing at his own beard. "_I've got my own problems at the moment. Master Piandao is dead._"

Zuko raised a brow. "_Are you sure? Azulon sent a hundred soldiers to kill him once and he sent them running with their tails between their legs._"

Sokka pulled out a short span of gleaming white blade. Zuko's eye widened when he saw that. Piandao had crafted that weapon more than twenty years ago, out of metal which couldn't be found anywhere in the Fire Nation. If he had relinquished it... "_I see. The Fire Nation is less for his loss._"

"_I have a few ideas who did this,_" Sokka said. "_But I'm not going to do anything until I know for sure. There aren't many who could bring down the master. More troubling is why. Why now? This wasn't done without purpose. Something larger is going on. I just don't see it yet._"

Zuko let out a low growl. "It seems like everything's a plot, nowadays," he said, slipping back into his native Huojian. The two stopped before the door, which was left ajar. Yasuke waved them in. Inside was already an inspector from House Azul. Ordinarily seeing them here would have been a blessing, but right now, it drew Zuko's features into a scowl. "I'm not going to ask how you got in here ahead of us."

"House Azul has its ways," the inspector said, with a precise bow. Under Fire Lord Zuko, Azul had better relations with the rest of the Nation than had in the past two generations, but Azul tended to play fast and loose with the rules when they thought nobody was looking, while acting like they abided them to the letter. And there was no shortage of people willing to offer services to anybody who could pay. "We are both aware of who was entombed here."

"I don't think entombed is the right word," Zuko said peevishly.

"So, this is where you kept your sister for six years?" Sokka said, ducking into the room, looking at it from corner to corner, top to bottom. "Kinda... sparse, don't you think? I mean, I'd be driven out of my mind if I had to stay in a room like this. Which defeats the purpose of having it in a mental hospital, doesn't it?"

The inspector gave a stern glance at Sokka, who was now whistling – badly – a bawdy song as he gave the room his own once-over. "Inspector Azdi, this is Lord Baihu of Ember."

"Lord Doctor," Sokka said with a raised finger, despite not looking at either of them. "Recently voted 'Most Handsome Doctor' at Ba Sing Se University, Anointed Guardian of Avatar Aang, and the only non-bender ever to win an Agni Kai. Also, plenipotentiary of the South Water Tribe if things really get that bad, doctor of applied and theoretical physics, and mayor of a nice little town in Di Huo. I'm also an honorary Lieutenant in the Grand Ember Defense Force, and I'm looking to get 'Professor' added on there at some point. Just to make people have to use more paper to fully name me."

"You have unusual taste in companions," Azdi muttered. "You won't find anything. The only place we could find any trace of her was on her bed and in the toilet. There's no evidence that she was active at the time of her abduction."

"Who was the doctor?" Sokka asked, finally staring at Azdi. He was hunched forward a bit, as though stooping to Azdi's level. "I mean, I assume that if you believe Azula was involved in this, she would have acted through her doctor."

"Ah yes, the doctor," Azdi rolled his eyes. "Ked Sowatri. One of your people, as I understand."

"Sowatri?" Sokka asked, an eyebrow raised. Zuko just shrugged, rolling his eyes. He turned to Yasuke. "His office, please."

Yasuke quickly ushered them all back out, leaving Azdi looking a bit perplexed, standing at the door. "Aren't you going to hear my findings?"

"You didn't find anything," Zuko said impatiently. "And even if you did, the only person who you'd give all the information to are your masters in Azul. I think I'll trust my own eyes, thank you."

The three men walked away. "I didn't know you disliked him so much," Sokka said idly.

"That's the weird part. I actually don't mind him," Zuko admitted with a sigh. "Maybe it's just that most of the people I have to deal with are actually worse."

"That's rough, buddy."

"This is his office," Yasuke said, indicating a room not far from where Azula's abandoned cell was located. It was packed with books and scrolls, from the ceiling almost to the floor. There was enough room left over for a pair of chairs, a cluttered desk, and a table with a basin on it. Despite the mess, Sokka's eye was immediately drawn to the basin. "He spent most of his time here, when he wasn't dealing with your sister. I don't doubt that the inspector has already gone over this room with a fine-toothed comb. It is his belief that Doctor Ked was part of the abduction."

"Ked, kidnapping a princess?" Sokka scoffed. "Doesn't sound like him at all."

"Did you know him?" Zuko asked.

"Yeah, he was one of my soldiers, back before I left the South Pole," Sokka said, inspecting the basin. It still had water in it. "Didn't follow orders very well. Also, had a tiny bladder."

"Weren't you fifteen when you left the South Pole?" the Fire Lord asked.

"Yeah, he was ten."

"And you people wonder why we almost won the War," Zuko said idly. Sokka shot him a scowl, and moved to the basin. He gave a glance to the door. Zuko glanced with him. "What?"

"Nothing. Just making sure a certain Azuli wasn't watching," Sokka said, before quickly dumping all of the water out of a window.

"What are you doing?"

"A basin is the last thing Ked would need," Sokka said, pulling out a knife and digging into the bottom of the thing. "He's a waterbender. He can keep it in a skin."

"Like those?" Zuko said, pointing at the three waterskins hanging off of Sokka. Sokka gave an academic gesture.

"Kerosene," he said, pointing to one, "for when I want something to burn," he pointed to another. "Brine for when I want to put something out. Or short an electrical circuit."

"A what?"

"It's a physics thing," Sokka waved away Zuko's obvious confusion. "And if I want to drink something..."

Zuko caught the flask which Sokka threw, and pulled the plug. The smell of the powerful alcohol inside actually forced him to hold it at arms length. "I'm sure this also gets used to disinfect wounds."

"Now you're thinking like a Tribesman," Sokka said, levering his knife, and exposing that the basin had a false-bottom, obscured by wax. Sokka eased the folded letter up and quickly read it. "Well, this is... damning."

"What is it?"

Sokka looked up, his blue eyes snapping of anger. "It's basically a confession. Ked has your sister."

* * *

The entryway hadn't changed much in the six years that he'd been coming here. One would have to go back a bit further than that to see when its current owner renovated the place, making it to her liking rather than its previous holder's. Jee liked the décor, personally. It reminded him of a half-barbarian imitation of home. And there was a very good reason for that.

Jee had arrived in the dead of night, opting not to stay aboard the ship or bed down in Kad Deid. No, he had another task tonight, one which could not wait to the morning. Technically it could, but there would be witnesses, and things would get messy. And awkward. Jee was not a young man; in fact, he was firmly in the domain of middle-age, but years as a soldier, supplemented by years living in a swamp gave him a resilient physique. He was still able to stalk along the aged pines without making a sound. He passed the row of plinths in the outer hallway, past the artifacts from a long and unwelcome trip. He paused briefly, noticing the last plinth was now empty. Odd.

The door opened silently, and he moved through the outer room. Without the threat of a war hanging over her nation, the Empress didn't pack the room with Whalesh samurai, like she had the first time he came here. That had been an enlightening trip. And had an unexpected ending. He knew the room well, so navigated it easily despite the darkness. He even knew the places where the floor would creak. Another door, and he was in the bedchamber of the Empress of Great Whales.

A grin on his face, he moved to her bed, one fist cocked back. He tore the covers away, and the dim light from a lantern on the table opposite him played across her form. Her golden eyes opened, and a smirk came to her face. "Why, Empress, it seems I have you at my mercy," Jee said.

The Empress, though, ignited golden fire in one of her hands, illuminating that her other held a loaded crossbow, pointed at Jee's groin. "Funny," she said, her mature tones sing-song. "I could say the same thing about you."

Jee let out a laugh. Like much about his existence the last decade, it was very dry. "Do you always sleep with weaponry, or do you restrain yourself for when you know I'm going to be around?"

"Which answer would you like?" she asked. "The truth, or the one which doesn't emasculate you completely."

"I have an ex-wife, Empress. I've been about as thoroughly emasculated as a man could be," Jee answered, taking a step back and letting his hands slip into his sleeves. "You're looking... well."

The Empress swung her legs off the bed, and set her crossbow aside. "You didn't come here to flirt, Jee. Why are you in my kingdom?" she asked.

"Your daughter," Jee said simply, and quietly. "She's been taken."

A flash of emotions played over the woman's face. "Azula?" she asked. Then, her expression hardened into one of anger. "You said she would be safe!"

"This was something outside my control," Jee said pointedly. "Somebody is manipulating events. I don't know who. Not yet."

Empress Dov I of Great Whales bit at a thumbnail, just for a moment before realizing it and pulling her hand away. Actual vulnerability. Now, Jee had seen everything this world had to show. She looked back up. "What are you doing to rectify this?" she asked, her tone flat but burning hot. It was a tone that Jee understood Azula had utilized often, but obviously never with this woman's skill nor intensity. It was a tone which offered a solution, surrounded in every other direction with lethal threat. Do as I say, or die.

"I will do nothing," Jee said. Her left eye twitched when he said that, and he made a placating gesture, despite the fact that she hadn't moved one whit otherwise. "If I do, I show my hand, and people will begin to question. You know where those lines of questioning lead."

"...Go on," she said.

"You recall my dossier on the new member of House Baihu?" Jee asked. "He is close to your son, and has personal motivation to seek out your daughter. If I understand it, it is some sort of cultural pride issue; you'd have to talk to a Tribesman to understand it better. He will be our agent, but we need to be especially careful dealing with him, Lady Ur..."

"Did I say you could speak my name?" she asked quietly, smoothly, and dangerously.

Agni's blood but wasn't she something?

"Pardon my presumption, Empress," Jee bowed genteelly, with a sarcastic smirk on his face. Both were accepted by the middle aged woman sitting at the edge of her bed.

"Why must we be careful with this Baihu? He is a barbarian, is he not?"

"He is also one of the most... laterally gifted... thinkers of his time. The man is capable of making cognitive leaps the likes of which leave the rest of us stuttering in confusion. If there is a single thread out of place, he will find it, and understand the significance of it. This will be the most subtle game we have ever had to play. Even more subtle than what you've been doing to your son."

"It wasn't my choice," she said again, sadly, the anger draining out of her, making her seem for just one moment a tired, lonely mother. "You know what happens if he finds me first."

"I've never been one for superstition. Do you mind if I sit? I'm not as young as I used to be."

The Empress nodded to a spot on the bed, and he lowered himself next to her. "It is my opinion that, at this time, trying to actively manipulate Sokka Baihu will end badly for everybody involved," Jee said, with a measure of certainty. "The only option we have is to let him do what he will anyway."

"And you're sure it will work?"

"You've never met the man," Jee said. "Sokka Baihu brought down a third of Ozai's doomsday-fleet on the day of Sozin's Comet. A third. Using nothing but his intellect and what he could steal out from under his enemy. The other two thirds were destroyed by our mutual associates in the Order. He did the work of an army. Don't underestimate the Tribesman, and believe me, don't consider them barbarians. They will surprise you."

A smirk came to her face. "It sounds like you really respect this young man."

"I'm just describing it as I understand it, Empress."

"Can you drop the titles, please?" she asked.

"I thought you wanted things... formal?" Jee countered. She raised a black eyebrow. "Very well, Ursa. What is it? What's really bothering you?"

"Twelve years," she said, briefly lowering her face into her hands. "I've been gone from Azula's life longer than I've been in it."

"Time just... slips away," Jee said, reaching over to rub her shoulder. She looked up at him for a moment.

"I have been... a terrible mother," she said quietly, her golden eyes drifting back to the floor. "I should have... I don't even know."

"I'm sure you did the best you could," Jee said. "Zuko definitely thinks so. Besides, this was Azula. What were you supposed to do with something like that?"

Her eyes snapped up at him.

"That... didn't come out right."

"I sometimes regret deciding to let you speak candidly, Ambassador."

"So we're back to being formal?" Jee said, rising from her bed. "I'll procure a room. We can speak in the morning, Empress."

"You will do no such thing," Ursa said. Her eyes were hurting, but that smirk had come to her lips. It was a smirk which had traveled from mother to daughter. Jee hesitated, standing at the door.

"What do you...?"

"Pants. Off. Now."

Jee's brow rose, but a grin came to his own face. "I live for the will of the Empress," Jee said.

"I _will_ be testing that statement," she said, leaning back.

* * *

Azula was trying very hard not to kill somebody. Between having to spend all day with a barbarian and everybody expecting her to be so... helpless, it took everything she had not to make _everything_ go boom. Every instant she spent jostling around in that carriage, bruising and rebruising that same spot in her hip that the bench dug in every goddamned time, biting her tongue in the silence which stretched on for hours. A fire was licking at her soul, a call to world-shattering violence. A release.

For some reason, it scared her that she felt this way.

"This is growing tiresome," Azula grumbled, glaring at her only companion.

"And I apologize for that, Lady Azula," Ked said, his eyes still shut, leaning back as though all was right in the world. All certainly was not. "We'll be stopping for the morning, soon. We can't travel by day, not until we get off of Grand Ember. Besides," a smirk came to his face. "Where your brother sets with the sun, I rise with the moon."

"Spare me your prattle, barbarian," Azula muttered.

"Doctor barbarian, thank you," he started to grin.

"I don't know what filthy hovel you earned your doctorate, but I wager it wouldn't be recognized by any right thinking citizen," she began.

"The Fire Academy," he answered, his eyes sliding open. "In two years, no less."

"Nobody becomes a doctor in two years."

"I did."

"You're lying," Azula snapped.

"Am I?" Azula glared at him, with that goddamned smug look on his face. He didn't think he was lying. But that didn't mean he was telling the truth. Not by a long measure. "I'm getting the feeling like you don't respect me very much."

"Oh, and where would that notion come from?" Azula's voice became singsong. The carriage suddenly lurched to a stop, dumping her out of her seat and landing her face in the barbarian's lap. She instantly pushed herself back, a bolt of azure flame sparking into being in her hand. It was only when she saw he had the decency to look embarrassed and contrite that she managed to rein in her impulse to give him a differently shaped face. "You planned that, didn't you?"

"I did no such thing," he muttered. He turned around and shouted something she couldn't understand at the driver. When the answer came back, he slumped back into the seat, looking a bit grey. "Well, here's where everything has the chance of falling apart. Remember that bodyguard Long Feng sent to make sure you don't get into trouble? He's here."

"Who is he?"

"That's the problem," the barbarian said, voice distant. "If he tells Long Feng about your condition, everything unravels."

"So you want me to act helpless around him, too?" Azula asked, her exact opinion of that lacing through her voice.

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that."

"Good. Because I've spent my entire life assaulted by people who want me to be less than I am," Azula said darkly. "And I will not be a doll for his amusement as well as yours."

"I'm not..."

"She's a feisty one, isn't she?" a new voice came, and both turned to the door. Azula had to say, she did not disapprove. He was a muscular young man, of obvious Embiar descent, dark brown eyes and tanned skin. He wasn't nearly so dark as the barbarian sitting across from her, but a great deal more appealing. She felt that smoky smile drift across her face for a moment, before the dire gravity pulled back to the fore, and she remembered what the barbarian had been so concerned about.

He'd just heard everything.

"I wasn't aware she'd be awake," the man said, a powerful smirk on his face. "That'll make my job a lot easier."

"Who are you?" the barbarian asked carefully.

"Chan. Why wasn't I told she was awake?"

"Because that way nobody would feel guilty about imprisoning the legitimate Fire Lord for six years," Azula lied, making sure her tone was properly acidic. "My _brother_ deposed me on the grounds that I was mentally unfit to rule, and he couldn't afford to let people know that the rightful leader he'd usurped was, contrary to his party-line, entirely capable in mind and body."

"It's a disgrace," Chan agreed. He turned to the Tribesman. "What's his part in this?"

Before he could speak, she overrode the barbarian. "He had the misfortune in being swept up in my brother's schemes. Needless to say, when Ked here learned the truth, he _begged_ for me to forgive his involvement and threw himself into my service."

"Is that true?" Chan asked. She shot the Tribesman a warning glance.

"Hey... I didn't beg... per se..." Ked said lamely, withering under her glare. It felt good to have him back in his place.

"Well, it is good that you're not in as dire condition as I expected," Chan said, giving a deep bow to Azula. She smiled. Now _this_ was the way she was supposed to be treated.

"Needless to say," Azula said, inspecting her nails idly. They were still entirely too short for her liking, and had lost their sharpness, "I must ask you not to spread this knowledge. Not even to our own allies. The fewer people know about this, the better position I find myself in when I need to take things into my own hands."

"Of course, Fire Lord," Chan said. When he called her that, a warm shiver ran up her body. She could get used to this. "If you'll excuse me, I'll be dismissing the carriage-man. We don't need any dirty foreigners meddling in our affairs."

"And where do I fit in again?" Ked muttered.

"You owe your lady service," Chan said, moving back around the carriage. "I'll make sure you render it."

When Chan began first talking to, then shouting at the driver, for neither spoke the language of the other, Ked affixed her with a thoroughly un-amused glare. "And what in the arid deserts of Hell was that?"

"You should know your place, foreigner," Azula said, a smoky smile on her face.

"I know my place," Ked said peevishly. "I need to make sure _you_ don't get yourself killed."

"On who's orders?"

"I need orders?" Ked answered. "Face it. You might have Chan fooled, but how long will that last? I wager unless he's a complete idiot, he'll catch wise by Jang Hui. And if not, there'll be no hiding it at Betla. You've just put us in a crash course with disaster."

"I have done no such thing," Azula said. "It's not my fault if you can't understand the subtle art of controlling people, barbarian, but in the Fire Nation, it is taken in with mother's milk. Fear is the _only_ reliable way to control people's actions, and I have instilled just the smallest kernel of fear into his Embiar soul. Make him feel like he is a failure if he doesn't protect me. He will fight eight times harder, feeling that his honor is at stake. I have created a more steadfast servant, at the cost of nothing more than a few, easy lies."

Ked just stared at her when she stopped. Silence stretched out, punctuated by a thump as Chan finally got impatient and threw the Whaleshman out of the driver's seat and took the reins himself, taking them deeper into the woods. The foreigner was not impressed, shouting gibberish at their departing backs, but Azula didn't care. Finally, Ked's eyes drifted closed, and he shook his head, slowly.

"You really believe that, don't you?" Ked said quietly. She frowned, confusion no doubt writ clear on her features. He looked back up at her. "I feel really sorry for you."

Her jaw tightened. "Don't feel sorry for me," Azula said. "Don't you even dare."

Ked sighed, and turned away, a melancholic expression on his face. He stared at the moon, hanging as a bare sliver over the horizon, barely visible with the sun already creeping into sight. After a few more minutes, the carriage came to a stop. Ked didn't say a word. He just stared up at the moon, muttering something she couldn't hear, and even if she could have, she wouldn't have understood.

* * *

The spot which Chan had chosen to bunker down for the day was better than Ked would have predicted, all things considered. The firebender himself had gone on a brief foray to make sure the place wasn't being watched, which gave Ked some walking around time. It was a goodly sized building, with a barn not far away, its wood well situated, if a bit dusty for its abandonment. The word was, these woods were haunted. It worked to their favor, the Tribesman mused. The curious young man in him had taken to exploring this place as the others were settling in. The kitchen was stripped bare, and in its heart was a passageway leading down into an empty room. Upstairs, a few puppets lay abandoned in the middle of the hall. Ked wondered idly who would have lived in such a place. And why it would be abandoned.

His musing was cut short, however, when he walked past Azula's room. Her back was to him, and she was utterly transfixed on her reflection. Her golden eyes were wide, her expression stuck somewhere between anger and terror, as her fingers slowly moved across her face. It was almost like she couldn't believe that her reflection was truly how she looked. That confused Ked somewhat. So she got a bit older without realizing it. Six years in catatonia does that to people.

"You think this is some sort of joke, don't you?" Azula hissed, staring hatefully into that mirror. Ked swallowed, inching away from the door. She'd seen him? "This seems like something you would do, isn't it?"

Ked was about to speak up and offer a somewhat confused and nondescript apology when she whirled away from him and talked to the window, staring out over the forest, which even in the day was darkened. "You really expect me to believe that?" Azula asked caustically. Ked's eyebrow rose, as he moved to the edge of the doorframe, watching her silently. "I know exactly what you're trying to do. You're trying to teach me _humility_, aren't you? Saddling me with the barbarian and the idiot?"

There was a long pause. Who was she talking to? She then turned and pointed at the mirror. "No! I will not hear it! Not from you! You hateful, despicable woman... It's your fault! If it hadn't've been for you, _Mother_, I would still be Fire Lord, and your _beloved son_ would be ashes drifting over the ocean!"

Ked's eyes grew wide. Of course he didn't understand. He was only hearing half of a conversation. Azula's eyes widened, and began to become moist. "You're lying! You always lie! It doesn't matter what you say, Mother, it's always lies!" She took a step toward the bed and her knee gave out a bit. Of course it would; she hadn't been moving very much at all in the last six years. The best he could do was to keep her body from cannibalizing itself utterly. She had more than half a decade of atrophy working against her.

"Don't you _dare_ pretend you care," Azula said, casting an accusatory finger at the mirror. "No. If the situation were reversed, you would have killed _me_ in an instant to save Zuko," Ked ran a hand over his hair as he watched this bizarre spectacle. She flinched away, letting out a brief and abortive blast of blue fire. "Don't you dare touch me! I know the truth. You were always trying to sabotage me. At my coronation. You tried to kill me with that fish, didn't you? Didn't you!"

The damp golden eyes of the deposed Fire Lord began to run in wet tracks down her cheeks. "No. You have no right. You don't know him. He lo... Father lo..." she actually burst into tears. "Fine. Say what you want. He was there. You weren't. What do you want from me? Why can't you just tell me what you want from me?"

Azula stood, tears running down her face, and stared into that mirror again, and then averted her gaze. Her hands balled into fists, and she whispered. "It's not fair. It's just not fair," she limped over to that mirror, hanging on the wall and grabbed its frame. "I can't do that! I'm not that person! Everybody knows that I'm a monster! Everybody _hates_ Azula!"

She pulled hard, and the mirror came off the wall. "Give me back my face, Mother!" she screamed. "GIVE ME BACK MY FACE!"

With a wordless scream, she hurled the mirror into the far wall, shattering it and sending its fragments clattering along the floor. She dissolved into desperate, helpless weeping, crumpled on the floor next to the bed. Gods, Ked thought, what have you wrought on this poor soul? What has made her so full of pain? A part of him wanted to go in there and try to give her some comfort. But a greater part, the part which he correctly labeled his self-preservation instinct, told him that would end in fire and death. Almost definitely his. Save the Avatar, she was the most powerful bender on the planet. Ked was comparatively pathetic. Despite every whit of his culture telling him to protect the woman in need, he turned and silently walked away, to where his own room was situated. He looked out the window, at the sun at the horizon, at the slender crescent still barely visible in the heavens. He got down and laced his fingers, touching his first knuckles to the center of his brow.

"_Yue, please, I beg you, give me strength_," he prayed. "_Give me the strength to heal this wounded child_."

* * *

In the dead of night, a pigeon rat took wing to the east. Its feathers were the color of rust, and it bore with it a scroll covered in lies. Azula is weak. Azula is barely conscious. Azula needs time before she can function at all. All part of the plan. And exactly what the sender said he would send.

The night drew on, and a second pigeon rat flew, this one the south. This one bore truths, but truths calculated to deceive. A message for family, but also a message inside it that only certain eyes would be able to decipher. She would, undoubtedly, show it to the proper person. That was the way she was. She always spread her joy.

An hour later, another bird, also flying east. More lies, but constructed for a different set of eyes. One, intended for the firebender, the other for the foreigner. Close enough that together they would not be mutually exclusive, far enough apart to make it seem like they were coming from different sources. It was a delicate balance that a man had to achieve. And who could say if he had it right, until it was possibly too late?

The last to fly was a 'sparrow'. Not a sparrow lizard, not a sparrow fox, not a sparrowguana, just a sparrow. It was an odd bird, but had an odd target. It flew into the darkness that preceded the dawn, circling around the Inn three times, before heading down and into the woods. Contrary to having to fly across the face of the world to find its target, the target had come to it. It landed, chirping, on the bedroll of a sleeping man. Sparrows might have been odd, but they were patient. And it would have to be, because Iroh was a heavy sleeper.

* * *

_By all means, leave a review. The slower pace of this story means I'll be able to address the readers more directly._


	2. Broken Girl

**One thing that I noticed from Book 3 was how people commented on Jeong Jeong being a total asshole. I really didn't see that; sure, he was as abrasive as he was in the series, but he was working for the other side. It isn't until _now _that he earns his asshole cred. And technically, yes, his assholeness is retroactive, but you'll see more of that in later chapters. A lot of it. He's downright vindictive.**

**Making the characters of Ked and Chan (especially in their current iterations) was a bit tricky, because I needed to make Chan an ass without making him murderable, and I needed to make Ked a good guy who could still be a bit of a tool. Ked can be _way_-overprotective, and Chan, while a douche sometimes, tries to do the best he can for the people he likes. It's just that he is a standard deviation or two below the level of intelligence of the others he deals with. And why you ask am I introducing Smellerbee as a character in the start without any real coherence? Because she's important later, and this way, you get to know her a little bit, too.**

**The first Arc of this story is now officially eight chapters long, as I have just recently finished the second of the two-part Arc finale. There will be two more Arcs, which align to three personal revelations for Azula, and three psychological states which pervade their respective Arcs. Short Arcs, like watching British television, each with a start point and an end, like it's made of three little seasons. Yes, although this is taking place in the Avatar world, it is odd that at no point in Fear Arc does Aang appear. **

_

* * *

_

_She was an odd looking woman. She was filthy, of course, but that came with the territory as a criminal. She was tall for an East Continent woman, almost as tall as Azula herself, but where Azula's figure had filled out into something resembling an hour-glass, this one's more resembled a pear. In a way, she much resembled a certain blind earthbender Azula had the misfortune of knowing, save for this one actually looked like she was out of her teenage years. Her mouth, thin lipped and caught in a perpetual scowl, was about as foul as any Azula had ever heard._

_"Well, now that we've got introductions out of the way, what brings you to my little corner of hell?" she asked, that scowl pulling into a brief smirk._

_"What makes you think I have any intention to talk with you, criminal?" Azula asked sharply. In truth, though, she was tired. In the two months since she awoke from her stupor, she had known nothing but confusion and fear and pain. Ked gave a glance between the two of them, a concerned look on his face. "I don't see what this is going to accomplish."_

_"Just talk to her, Lady Azula," Ked said, making a placating gesture. The hard white scar spanning his left hand was prominent. "Besides, we need to stay away from Long Feng for a few hours, and he would never think you'd come down here. Would you rather sit in silence and boredom?"_

_"Comparative to what?" Azula asked, crossing her arms under her bosom. Ked's eyes widened at the sudden upthrust of cleavage, before turning away. Oh, but it was fun to mess with the Tribesman's mind. He gestured placatingly._

_"Just... try not to kill each other. We've come too far for him to find out now," Ked said, before pulling on a physician's coat and moving to the exit. "At least she's not screaming or throwing her shit at you. The other cell is has a rapist in it. I doubt he'd be pleasant conversation."_

_At the mention of the rapist, Azula flinched a bit. She wasn't sure why, though. She'd dealt with worse in her quest to kill the Avatar. Ked slipped out the door, closing it behind him. Azula sat on the bench, her arms still crossed, and stared at the prisoner. The prisoner, shackled hand and foot, just enough slack for her to sit in the corner, stared back. "So," Azula finally broke the silence. "What did you do to get thrown in here?"_

_"Conversation out of you? I hadn't expected it to sound as painful as pulling teeth."_

_Azula's jaw tightened. "I'm trying to be civil, criminal. You do know what civility is, don't you?"_

_"Better than you could imagine, princess," she scoffed. "I figure I've got just about as much royal blood in me as you do. If the going line about Ozai is right, then I've actually got more."_

_"You are lying," Azula said._

_"Not even hardly," she leaned back with another smug smirk. "Before I was Smellerbee, I was Princess Bi of Three Hills. Of course, that was before your people came in and burnt it to the ground."_

_Azula laced her fingers together under her nose, leaning forward on the table that was built jutting out of the wall. "And I suppose you expect me to apologize for that?"_

_"Couldn't hurt."_

_"No," Azula said simply. "Three Hills was destroyed because it would not cease its insurgent attacks after its conquer. I wasn't even six years old when it happened. If you can somehow rationalize the notion that I was responsible, then you must be as mad as everybody says I am."_

_Smellerbee let out a dry, bitter laugh at that. "You don't apologize very much, do you?"_

_"I make a point of not doing things I'll later regret," Azula answered. Suddenly, her eyes darted away, "...most of the time."_

_"Well, look at that. She actually has a soul," Smellerbee taunted. "Color me shocked."_

_"Color you dead if you don't desist this," Azula answered, leaning forward, her fingers splayed across the table. She still couldn't seem to get her fingernails to grow. Mostly because any time they got any length to them, she would unwittingly gnaw them back to the quick again in stress or nervousness. Not that she would ever admit, even to herself, that she could be nervous. "You didn't answer my question."_

_"I'm here because when I see red, I kill the guy wearing it," the prisoner answered. "It's the least I could do, considering."_

_"So you're a terrorist."_

_"Terrorists attack civilians. I kill soldiers," Smellerbee pointed out. "Civilians can't fight back. I'm not going to kill the defenseless, and I'm not going to kill those who don't know why I'm after them. That was Jet's... mistake... almost a decade ago. That was when it all started to unravel."_

_Azula scoffed. "Spare me your sob stories. I've heard enough of them to last the next century."_

_"Yeah, I bet you're so perfect that nothing in your life has ever gone wrong," Smellerbee said sarcastically. Then she made a mock coy face. "Oh, but wait, you got kicked out of bein' Fire Lord after three days and then spent six years trapped inside your own crazy. My mistake."_

_"You don't know anything about me, criminal."_

_"I bet you don't, either," Smellerbee said with a smirk_.

* * *

**Chapter 2: Broken Girl**

* * *

"Sokka, you need to calm down," Zuko said, but Sokka ignored him. He continued shoving his things back into his traveling bag, a habit that despite more than a decade on the move, he hadn't refined beyond grab thing, and stick it in. "Are you listening to me?"

"Not really," Sokka said. "Besides, don't I look calm?"

"Sokka, you look about as calm as you were before beating that guy half to death two years back. It's a bit scary," Zuko admitted. Sokka grit his teeth for a moment. He quickly took stock of himself. It was something that he had to do consciously, now. Before, he knew himself as well as the back of his own hand, but ever since the Battle of Wu Long Forest, his temper had a habit of sneaking up on him while his back was turned.

Yes, he was angry. Angrier than he thought he would be. "Fine. I'm angry," Sokka said, his tone still casual. "I'm surprised you're not more angry than you are. My kinsman did just kidnap your sister, after all."

"You don't need to do this alone, I could have..." Zuko offered, but Sokka held up a forestalling hand.

"I'm faster than anybody you could send," Sokka said. "Besides, I'm pretty sure Piandao's death is somehow connected to your sister's abduction. If I find one, I'll find the other. And I'm not going to let either slip through my fingers."

Zuko sighed, slumping back against a wall. "I don't even know why you want to do this."

Sokka quickly forced a grin onto his face. "I know all about loving an aggravating sister, Zuko. Just let me do this one."

"You don't even know where they'd go," Zuko pointed out.

"Yeah, but Ked won't have many options. You own the skies and the straits. For now, he's going to have to stay hidden here, on Grand Ember. Which means I just need to find him before he gets a chance to start island-hopping."

"I... I appreciate this, Sokka. More than you know," Zuko said, sounding so tired. "Agni's blood, why can't anything ever be easy?"

"That's the life we lead," Sokka said. "Say hello to Yuuki and what's-her-name for me."

"They're wondering what you're going to bring them next time," Zuko said, a small smile pulling at his weary features. "You should stay with us when this is over. It'd be nice to see some familiar faces that aren't trying to kill me."

"I figure I've got plenty of time to swing by Sozin City after I kill Ked," Sokka said earnestly. Zuko, though, shook his head. "What?"

"It isn't Sozin City anymore. Had it renamed."

"To what? Zuko City?"

"Please, like _I've_ earned that sort of egotism," Zuko said, getting back to his feet. "I'll keep a room open for you. Do you need a war balloon?"

"I figure a Komodo Rhinoceros would be a bit more inconspicuous."

"I didn't notice that you had one earlier," Zuko said. Then, he stopped, palming a face. "Where are you getting the Rhino, Sokka?"

"Don't they wander wild around Grand Ember?" Sokka asked, slinging the bag over his shoulder. Zuko got a perplexed look on his face.

"What does that have to do with...?" Sokka was grinning. Zuko sighed. "Don't tell me you're going to..."

Sokka turned on his heel and walked away, leaving the Fire Lord behind him to mutter something about the insanity of Embiar nobility, Tribesmen, and the multiplicative effect which occurs when the two overlap.

* * *

The group had settled into the abandoned inn for a day, now, and already, Azula's nerves were beginning to grate on her. She hated sitting around, waiting for something to happen. Her impatience had long been a problem she struggled to rein in. The only time she could really wait was when she was on the hunt, when the only thing she waited for was her quarry to arrive so she could pounce. Right now, though, she was the prey, and she hated that feeling, even more than having to exchange words with the idiot and the barbarian.

That was why she found herself in the attic of this little building. Unlike the floors below, which were decorated neutrally, with just a bit of Fire Nation flare, up here, all the colors were pale and blue, and long abandoned animal skins lay pushed into one corner where she'd shepherded them. In another was a dusty, torn-up wall hanging with a white flower on it. The space was open, windowless, and private. And that meant that nobody could watch as she firebent. With the barbarian asleep and the idiot gathering supplies, she had some freedom.

The freedom as she lashed forward with careful blasts of electric blue fire was better than sex. Well, better than what she imagined sex was like. She didn't have any practical experience, but it couldn't possibly rival this. As always, nobody could tell her what to do when she bent her blue flames. Nobody could, because there was nothing to say. She was the most powerful bender on the planet, behind only the Avatar. Or so they said, anyway. She lashed forward with a kick just a bit too hard, not only losing her balance and almost falling to one side, but actually setting one of the rafters aflame. She let out a low growl and pulled her hands down, drawing the flame away from the wood into the air, where, deprived of fuel, it snuffed. She felt like hell. Every movement felt like she was being beaten with a belt, then set on fire. Her strength had abandoned her, and worst of all...

"You're losing control again," she said. Azula studiously ignored the source of the taunt. "And you can barely stand. How long have you been doing this? Have you even completed your first set? No wonder Father was so disappointed in you."

"You are not real," Azula said grimly, fighting the metaphorical fire in her legs. Agni's blood, why did she feel so weak? What had become of her stamina? She used to be able to outlast earthbenders, for gods' sake! A clack of hard-heeled boots sounded, and that figure walked around to Azula's line of vision. She was a teenager, clad in red, black and gold armor. Her eyes were golden and bloodshot, her bangs slashed unevenly. She wore Azula's face. Azula's proper face, not this too old, too long, too-much-like-_Mother_ face that she was trapped behind.

"I'm more real than you could ever imagine," the doppelganger said. A smirk came to her painted lips. "Oh, keep practicing. I find this endlessly amusing."

Azula pulled herself back into a proper stance, ignoring the screamed protestations of her body and the taunting figure of her double. She pulsed forward with another set of precise blows, letting the fire snuff itself before setting alight the wooden rafters of the roof. "I am in control," Azula said. "I am in control."

"Funny how people who say that are so patently not," the double chided. Azula ignored her, pushing herself harder. She was better than this. She had to be perfect! Nothing less would do! She moved into her advanced forms, and her body begged her to stop, to relent, to relax. Fire pulsed, and ebbed and waxed, it flowed like blood as she moved through the forms she knew as well as her own body. And it was precisely for that reason that she had to stop, half way through, and put out another fire. Azula let out another frustrated growl, only managing to keep it from growing into an all-out scream of rage through terrific willpower. Why couldn't she do this right? Why couldn't she do _anything_ right?

Oh, right. Because she was a monster, and nobody would ever love her. She slumped to her knees, supporting her slumping body with her hands on the floor. "I... am in... control," Azula said again, her voice warbling on the edge of losing complete coherence.

"And yet here you are, surrounded by enemies, a tool for Long Feng," her double said, leaning down to look Azula in the eye. "No wonder Father _beat_ you. You are a failure. You are worthless to him. He should have killed you years ago, when he learned how worthless you really were."

"My father lo..." Azula still couldn't get the word out. The double smirked.

"Please. Like he even could. Who could love something like you?" the double said. The double's fist lashed out toward the fallen Princess' face, and Azula felt herself losing consciousness even before it landed.

* * *

Long Feng sipped at the harsh, bitter tea. It was a common blend, used by common folk. Once, it had been an object lesson on not to become arrogant, lest he find himself tumbling back to where he began. Since that exactly happened, it was now a constant reminder to learn from his past mistakes. He had not come so far to fade into obscurity. He would not disappear without mention from this world, vanished between one story and another like a badly written antagonist. He just had to be careful and patient. His time as the Grand Secretariat of the Dai Li had made him both.

He set his cup onto a table, overlooking a roaring fire. Without turning back to the door, he laced his fingers and spoke. "Come in, and deliver your news. I haven't got all day," said he in a tone announcing his annoyance.

"Grand Secretariat, it is an honor to return," a familiar voice spoke quietly. One which had Long Feng raise an eyebrow in uncharacteristic surprise. Long Feng turned to face this arrival. It was a very nondescript man, his hair greying for his age, but one feature marked him out instantly; he had a gaping hole where his right eye should be.

"Secretariat Han. I suspect you have a good reason for coming here," Long Feng said, straightening his posture. Han nodded briefly.

"We all have our strategies, Grand Secretariat. Mine just run longer than most," Han said.

"And you were able to infiltrate the Order?"

"It took some time," Han affirmed. "They believe I am firmly on their side. With them, I was able to avert the annihilation of Ba Sing Se via firebombing. I would call the gambit a success."

"Therefore you are in a perfect position to wipe them out," Long Feng finished, but Han was shaking his head. "Or do I misunderstand our previous arrangement?"

"The White Lotus only mobilized against your puppet in Ba Sing Se because the Grand Lotuses were unanimous. They will not be so, this time. I don't believe there is any need to destroy them. They will not interfere in an internal matter. That is their policy."

"I see," Long Feng said. "You are saying that my imperative is to keep this war 'internal'."

"Nobody wants to become embroiled in somebody else's civil war," Han said.

Long Feng ran his fingers down the strands of mustache that trailed at the corners of his mouth. "How do I know I can trust you?"

"The same way you trusted me for twenty years," Han said. A smirk came to the man's face. "I have no intention of letting anybody from that family remain in power."

"Be careful. That skirts dangerously close to Chin's mandate of 'All Things Beneath My Feet Shall Be My Kingdom'."

"Not much one for a snappy title, was he?" Han asked. Long Feng glared.

"Your time with the enemy has made you glib, Secretariat."

"Perhaps. But this might be the best chance we have of reversing the insult the Fire Nation dealt us in the Weary War. A world, under Earth King Long Feng," Han said.

"Steward Bumi might have something to say about that," Long Feng noted. Han had certainly absorbed some dangerous ideas in his time away from the nest.

"Less than you'd think," Han smiled, now. "Bumi is dying."

"Your doing?"

"No. He is a hundred and twenty. He had to die eventually," Han shrugged. "You know what I would recommend for this. We wait for the chaos after his demise, and you can reveal yourself as ruler not just of the West Continent, but deserving ruler of the East as well. The people will beg for your rulership."

Long Feng stared. "What do you want out of this?"

"I am your faithful servant. That has not changed."

"_Much_ has changed in the last six years, Secretariat," Long Feng stared at the other man as the fire snapped and popped. Finally, he flicked his hand. "Go and have Colonel Mongke brought to me."

"Yes, sir," Han said with a bow, and silently left the room. Long Feng was given to a healthy amount of paranoia, so wondered what exactly Han was planning. Six years, and no contact until just now. He must have known about the figurehead. He must have known about what was to come. After a few minutes, the multiply-pierced leader of the group once called the Rough Rhinos ducked into the tent. He was a brash, unthinking man, but had a way with his soldiers, and those soldiers were themselves extremely skilled. He could be directed, if given a careful hand.

"You called for me, foreigner?" Mongke asked. He always referred to Long Feng the same way, as though trying to rile the Ba Sing Se native. It didn't work.

"I think it time you were given a command more suited to your capacities," Long Feng said. "You will ignite the riots in Grand Ember with one hundred men of your choosing. I also recommend you send somebody to keep watch over your Princess. I fear the guard I sent may not be enough, and I fear my agent's loyalties might be... insincere and needing correction."

"Whatever you say, foreigner," Mongke answered, a knowing smirk on his face. "Vachir's been getting a bit restless. I might let him stretch his legs for a while."

"Good. It is time to reignite a dormant war. Are you prepared for that?" Mongke only smiled. Inwardly, as Long Feng drank his bitter tea, he did the same.

* * *

Azula dreamed.

It was strange, how things blended together. The bed she was laying on was the small, only moderately comfortable one in the abandoned Inn, but the room was hers, her old room in the Royal Palace at Sozin City. Her old room. She sat up in bed, a sound kicking the sleep away. Well, a layer of it, anyway. It was like she awoke from a dream and into another one. She glanced around. The room was dark, but she could see movement in one corner of the room.

"Who dares come into my bedroom?" Azula demanded, and was, by virtue of being asleep, not shocked when her voice was high and undeveloped, the voice she spoke with in her childhood. "Show yourself and I'll let the guards have you, otherwise..."

Azula stood, letting fire flare on her palm. There was an instant of stretching, the dream almost collapsing, where she both wondered why her flames weren't blue, and wondered why she thought herself capable of making blue flame. She was older when she mastered the purest flames. Older than this, anyway. The dream logic overwrote her conscious knowledge, and the dream settled back into place. She walked, her bare feet padding along the floor.

When she spoke, there was a panicked silence. But after a few seconds, splashing sounded again. Somebody or something was messing about with her basin. Azula's wide, golden eyes squinted as she tried to look past her flame into the darkness which pressed in from beyond its pool of light. "Don't make me come after you. You won't like it if I do," Azula taunted. There was a wet thlop sound. Wet cloth falling to obsidian stone. When she reached the point where she was starting to hem in that corner, she saw that her room was still intact, its walls not yet blasted and blackened. A part of her mind, only audible in the dream, asked why she had done that? Why had she burnt these rooms? The dream moved on, and the thought was left behind.

"This is your last warning. Show yourself or die," Azula said harshly. There was a whisper of silk, wet silk, and red clothing began to move into the light. It was long, of the most expensive red silk that could be found on this Earth. And it was torn, tattered, almost. Treated with cruelty far beneath its worth. Azula's gaze rose, from the bare feet poking through the obliterated front hem, to the hands hanging at her sides. Her fingers on one hand were swollen and twisted; they had been dislocated, and only crudely set back into place. One sleeve had been torn off completely, and long scratches ran down one arm, which glistened with water.

And tear-filled golden eyes looked back at her. Azula's stomach flopped into her feet, as the one face she had never thought she'd see, either in the dream or in the waking world, stared back at her. The flame guttered a bit, but she managed to hold it, shaking her head in incredulity. "M...mother?" she asked.

And Ursa ran toward her, her arms open...

Azula's eyes popped open with a grunting gasp that she would never had admitted to if pressed. The dream shattered away, but that last image, of mother looking so desperate, so... she couldn't shake it out of her mind. And she wanted to. She brought her hand to her face. Or tried to. It was trapped under a blanket, and lacked even the strength to dislodge that thin cloth barrier, not even tucked in.

"Peace, Azula," an old voice spoke. She instantly decided that she must still be dreaming. Between her inability to move and the familiar tone, it was the only thing which made sense. "It is good to see you awake. I thought... I might never have the chance to see you again in this life."

Deciding to play along with the dream, she turned and addressed the figment of her psyche. As expected, Uncle was sitting next to the bed, a cup of tea in his hands, his drab, dark red robes pooling around him. "And you still haven't," Azula said.

Iroh shrugged. "In a way, I suppose you are right," he said. When she shifted, he shook his head lightly. "Do not try to move, Azula. Your heart cannot take the strain. Not yet."

"I know you're not real," Azula said, her voice as weak as she felt. It enraged her, impotently. "You would have told my brother where I was. And he would have..."

"A long time ago, not long after I became the Dragon of the West," Iroh interrupted, pausing only long enough to upend his tea and settle into a slightly different pose, "I had a vision. I had a vision that a brother and a sister, siblings and benders, she a prodigy without match, he a stalwart guardian, would be united under a grand purpose, to see the Avatar returned to ascendancy, to work together to see balance restored to the world."

"What are you...?"

Iroh nodded. "Recently... I discovered that the vision referred to young Sokka Baihu and his sister, Katara. But..." he shook his head. "No. Before, long before I ever knew of them, I knew this would come to pass. And I was sure Zuko would be involved in it. But at the same time, I was sure you would as well."

"You are blathering... nonsense," she said, trying to be cold but too exhausted and aching to get any strength behind it.

Iroh ignored her statement, or otherwise didn't follow after it. "Eleven years ago, I knew that I would once again walk the Earth, with the banished child of Fire Lord Ozai. But I didn't think, not even once, that it would be Zuko."

"What are you saying, old man?" she demanded, weakly.

"I was _sure_ it would be **you**, Azula." Iroh said softly. "I was sure, in my heart, that it would be _you_ who your father banished. I was sure your fire and your zeal, and that goodness that _still rests in your heart_ would drive you to question my brother, to incur his wrath. I was sure that it would be you, not Zuko, who I would have to become a father for," a tear fell down his weathered, aged face. "And I wish that it had. You would have been so much... happier. Freer. Less broken."

"I am not broken," Azula hissed.

"Where did you spend your fourteenth birthday?" Iroh asked, gently.

Azula opened her mouth to answer, but there wasn't one there to give. She frantically thought back, trying to recall, to throw something in his face. But there was nothing there. Nothing she could grasp. She cursed the dream inwardly for leaving her so feeble, and settled for casting a death glare at him instead.

"You were once your mother's daughter," Iroh said, rising to his feet, and setting something down on the table nearby. "Brilliant and stunning and cunning. You would have come back from your banishment a Fire Lord worth revering. Instead... Instead, you became my brother's daughter. And not, I think, by your choice."

"That makes no..."

"You could have been so much _more_ than he made you," Iroh said, pain and sadness etched deep into his tone. He looked her in the eyes, then, golden gaze to golden gaze. "But there is always hope. You cannot give up. The darkness of night always gives way to the purifying sunrise. You will find your own path. And when you come out of the darkness, you will be the person destiny always meant for you to be. Great. Whole," Iroh said. He briefly laid his hand on the blankets next to her shoulder. She wanted nothing more than to set the bed on fire, just to spite him. "Loved," he finished. She ground her teeth, the only thing she was still capable of. He moved his hand away, and walked toward the door.

"When I wake up, I'll make a point to forget this," Azula muttered.

"When you dream, you may forget," Iroh said, not turning back at the door. "But never forget that I have faith in you. You are more than my brother's weapon. You are Azula. Remember who you are, and when you do, never forget it again. That will be your path to greatness. I know it in my heart."

With that last inanity voiced, Iroh vanished from the room. She waited for the dream to end, but it hung in the air, mocking her. Oddly, it didn't go away, until she felt like she was falling asleep again.

* * *

Two things that the Weary War created no shortage of were orphans and shell-shocked veterans. Any war could do the same, but unique to the last conflict was that there were two and a half generations who could be called both. There was a boom industry in people trying to medicate and triage the victims of war. The physical injuries healed quickly. But six years after Zuko called a stop to the conflict, the scars on the mind were still fresh on all sides. Scar tissue, unhealed despite countless sleepless nights, raw and tender. When it healed, it would make for one of the most resilient generations ever, but until that time, it was still of use to people like Jeong Jeong.

He was alone, of course. After Ozai's elemental castration and Azula's descent into psychosis, he was the greatest firebender of the age. There wasn't anybody who could be paired with him who wouldn't slow him down, despite his seventy years of age. He still fought the urge to run fingers along the stitches running almost perfectly parallel to the older scar, holding his right eye shut, and prevented that part of his face from flopping open. His eye was still there, and intact, but the laceration had almost gouged it out.

The facility was well guarded, but in a way which didn't help them. It was defended to keep those within from raising a fuss, not from people like Jeong Jeong from getting in. He picked a random portion of the wall, since he didn't see any particular need for doors, then let all emotion drain out of him, pooling outside him like a physical substance. He took a moment to reflect. The last time he bent lightning, it almost cost him his eye, but saved his life.

The scene unfolded in his mind again, as his hands began to circle and that energy was pulled apart. The evening had been approaching, and the rain was falling without mercy on the grounds of the master of masters, once the most renowned soldier the Fire Nation ever produced, and now only rendered second by his deceased student. The old servant opened the door, and his eyes widened, as good as a gape of shock from another man. Jeong Jeong didn't waste time, giving a very curt nod to the servant, and stepping out of the rain. Fat reached for a blade on a rack near the door, but Jeong Jeong had spent too long a time to be put off by some overweight housekeeper.

Jeong Jeong lashed out with a stiff fingered blow to the side of Fat's neck, followed by a clothesline more squarely across the front of it, driving the larger man back against the wall, stunned and unable to breathe. Since Jeong Jeong had no need of him, alive or dead, he then thrust two fingers into the man's broad belly, and ignited a flame, inside the man's body. Unable even to scream, he collapsed to the floor as his body burnt from the inside out. He was dead in seconds. Jeong Jeong could have been quicker, but that would have been noisy, and he wanted to not cause any more problems than he had to.

Jeong Jeong quietly took off his shoes and walked into the broadly open building. Despite Piandao's considerable wealth and influence, his homes, both here and in the Ember archipelago were sparsely decorated, almost spartan in their aesthetic. It was one of the few things about the man for which Jeong Jeong approved. He walked through the building, making less sound than the pounding rain. He stood before a door. A smirk came to his mustachioed face, and he slid the door open with one hand, while the other went down to his side.

The instant the door was slid to the side, a flash of white metal lashed toward Jeong Jeong's face, but he had prepared, and lashed his other hand up. While he was no swordsman, by any means, he had this taken to prove a point, and the point was illustrated well when the white blade was parried up and away in a flash of sparks as it slid along metal as black as night. Jeong Jeong thrust forward a hand, and a blast of percussion threw the swordsman back into his study.

Piandao landed nimbly, unsurprising considering he was more than a decade Jeong Jeong's junior. His dark grey eyes focused on the intruder. "Where did you get that?" he had demanded.

"I am the one demanding answers," Jeong Jeong countered, sliding the unique weapon away. In truth, he intended to hand it off to one of his more trusted agents, but the look of shock on his ex-contemporary's face was worth the effort. Piandao's eye flicked to one of the side doors, which no doubt led another path to the entrance Jeong Jeong had used. "Don't worry, your man did not suffer. Much."

Piandao scowled. "I will tell you nothing, profligate," he said, moving down into a swordsman's stance.

"What you know you don't need to be alive to tell me," Jeong Jeong had said. Then, like all things, it was pain and blood and lightning. Piandao's unexpectedly swift attack almost blinding him, but Jeong Jeong smiting him down with a bolt of lightning like he was nothing. And in a way, he was. And now, Jeong Jeong had the name he'd been looking for. The mind behind this operation was correct in that there were many things that had to be accounted for. One of them was a blind earthbender woman of unmatched skill. So Jeong Jeong had to find something to counter her.

The energy stood at a precipice as Jeong Jeong focused again on today, and let the lightning lash out, smashing through the wall, the outermost room, its inside wall, and into the hallway beyond it. Whatever occupants the room housed, if not killed by the lightning smashing through, would have both roasted as the air in the room caught fire, then been crushed and lacerated by the debris sent flying. The most energetic of it fell just short of Jeong Jeong's upturned shoes. It didn't bother him one whit. They were all mad, after all. They might not have even noticed. Taking a moment to straighten his robes, he marched into the hole he had created.

Physicians crawled away from the bedlam, stunned, as Jeong Jeong entered the facility. One of the orderlies got a look of rage on his face. Jeong Jeong casually swept up a hand, and a wall of flame connected ceiling to floor in that hallway. He cast it out, and it burnt away everybody still in that direction, the orderly included. He moved deeper, away from the front of the complex and into its heart. The guards, armored now against knives and clubs, rushed at him as soon as he came into view. With contemptuous ease, he put them down, a hard bolt of fire knocking them from their feet and smashing their hearts out the back of their spines. He wasted no further time, moving to the control room. He even knew the room he would have to open. But he pondered.

What would cause more harm to Zuko? News that hundreds of victims of mental trauma had burnt to death in one of his 'safe hospitals'? Or a hundred potentially violent madmen wandering wild in his homeland? After a moment, Jeong Jeong decided to simply unlock all of them. If even one violent psychopath was released, it would reap dividends in terror. He moved on.

The mad streamed past him as he walked the halls. Any who tried to grab ahold of him, found themselves missing a limb with a cauterized stump. It quickly became apparent even to the most deranged to give the older man in the red robes a wide berth. The door at the end of this long hallway remained closed. He quickly pushed it open. The room was unlike any other in this building. While it was as clean and well-kept as any other, this one was not bare, smooth and fireproof stone as were the others, but covered in a thick layer of steel. The steel gleamed, of course, for it was spotlessly clean... in most of the room. In one corner, though, there was filth. Filth beyond any simple means of description.

The stink of old urine and sweat wafted from that corner. Quite unlike the pristine white robes that other prisoners of this facility wore, this one's was stained yellow and brown. The hair of the occupant was cut extremely short, probably to prevent its being pulled out, and every visible patch of skin was either covered in filth, sores, or both. Jeong Jeong ignored the stench and turned the youth with a foot. The youth was either a very effeminate boy or a very masculine girl, and to be honest, Jeong Jeong didn't really care which it was. It also had eyes which were two different shades of green, one dark, the other almost white. Its expression was almost blank, and it seemed utterly helpless. But nobody put anything helpless in a room designed to prevent earthbending.

This was possibly the most dangerous earthbender on the planet. And it was exactly what Jeong Jeong was looking for. "Get up," Jeong Jeong ordered. "You are needed at the front."

And the child rose, eyes vacant and distant, and began to walk out of the room.

* * *

"And just when I was getting the upper hand, he kicked me in the nuts," Chan said, rubbing the back of his neck. "I mean, give a man his dignity. I should never've agreed to fight in Sokka Kai."

"I don't even know if _that's_ a real thing," Ked admitted. He didn't like the firebender. There were a number of good reasons why he didn't. He wasn't very bright. He tended to think in terms of how much things needed to be beaten before they went down. He was a dangerous opening through which calamity could pour. He was an unpredicted element. But all that was just window-dressing on his real concern. Azula listened to Chan. Not much, and not about anything important, but when Ked talked, she got a glazed, unfocused look on her face, like she was thinking of something else. Which she almost certainly was. While she might disregard what Chan said, at least she heard it, first. "But hey, he could have just opted to kill you. So that's something."

Chan shrugged. As much as Ked resented the larger man's presence, there wasn't much Ked could do. Azula thought he was a lapdog to be played with. The man who sent him here would be using him to keep tabs on them both, and would raise alarms if he was 'mistakenly left behind'. "Yeah, well, weird enough, there's actually some upside to getting my ass kicked by Wang Fire. Apparently, I'm one of like three people who had the balls to actually pick a fight with him."

"I bet your mother's so proud," Ked said, rolling his eyes as he pulled open the door leading into the kitchen of the inn.

"Well, she smacked me upside the head when I didn't get her an autograph," Chan answered. "You should have seen that man fight. He took on... is that tea?"

Ked put down his basket of supplies and raised a brow at the kettle on the stove. It was indeed tea. He wafted some of it into his nose. Jasmine tea, even. "Azula must have been up when we were out," Ked said.

Chan shook the kettle briefly. "Not much left in there. Damn," he set down his stacked baskets and let out a grunt of surprise. Ked, who hadn't yet had a chance even to look a way, raised a questioning eyebrow. "What the hell is this?" the firebender asked, picking up something off the table.

Ked had to make very sure he didn't show his surprise. It was the size of a Pai Sho tile, but instead of any standard marking, it showed a dragon and a red flower. Most likely a Fire Lily. Ked forced himself to casually take it and give it a moment's inspection. He shrugged. "She must have found it when she was making tea," he said, then casually threw it into the rubbish bin. He made a note to grab it when the firebender left the room. "Speaking of, it might be time to make sure the lady is awake."

"Then go get her," Chan said, pulling up a chair and heaving his boots onto the table.

"Somebody has to make dinner. Can you cook?" Ked asked, manufacturing an excuse. Chan let out an exaggerated sigh, and moved up the stairs. As soon as he was out of eyeshot, Ked dug through the rubbish, and pulled out the tile. He quickly levered it in half lengthwise with his knife, showing that it was two chips, glued together. One of the halves had a single word painted onto it. 'Continue'.

So _he_ knew about Azula. And he condoned. Ked wasn't sure whether to be relieved or worried. He had come here. Would he tell the Fire Lord? There were too many problems, and his own personal worries were beginning to mount up on him. He had to do this right, or people would start to die. People he cared about. He threw the tile into the fire, and went up the stairs. They couldn't stay here much longer. That was evident.

Ked found himself taking the stares upward two at a time, pulling a bit of water into his hands. He knew she would probably need a bit of a pick-me-up; her body's atrophy was something which would take time to fully correct. When he opened the door, and saw her lounging on that bed, that smoky smile on her face as Chan boasted his bravado, the water grew darker, as though murky, then beyond murk, to blackness. He saw golden eyes flit toward him, and he quickly controlled himself, and the water snapped back to transparent, covering his hands like a pair of gloves. "I see Chan has been neglecting his duty," Ked said tersely, moving around to the other side of the bed. Chan smirked.

"She wanted to talk. So I talked," Chan answered. Azula cast a pointed, smug look at Ked over the firebender's shoulder. It practically screamed 'it doesn't matter what you do, Tribesman, I own you'. Chan broke out into a crooked smile again. "Besides, she finds my little stories fascinating. Don't you, Fire Lord?"

"They captivate my imagination, and take my breath away," Azula said, staring at Ked, smirking that way it was becoming more and more evident only she could. And still... Ked made a beckoning motion. "What?"

"I sent Chan up so he could get you. You need some time in healing," Ked said, moving to pull some towels out of the table beside the bed. As he did, his gaze caught on a small, stuffed doll sitting atop it, wearing clothing which was probably in vogue in Ba Sing Se about fifteen years ago. It was badly singed.

"I don't need healing. I'm perfectly fine," Azula said haughtily.

"No, you're not," Ked said. "You walked for the first time in six years. Do you know how muscles develop? They develop from repairing themselves from damage caused in day to day..."

"Is there a point to this, barbarian?" Chan interrupted. Ked set his teeth. It was becoming very hard to stay calm around these people.

"She might have noticed the weakness by now, or maybe not," Ked said diplomatically. "Either way, if she doesn't get my specific brand of healing, she'll be in agony for the next week, and _walking_ will be utterly out of the question."

Azula's eyebrow rose momentarily, as though pondering something, but Ked couldn't say what it was. She finally rolled her eyes, and reached a hand over. Ked raised a brow of his own. "I wasn't aware that your leg muscles were in your arm," Ked said.

Azula stared daggers at him. "If I decide you're taking any perverse sexual pleasure in this..."

"Then I'll crush you like a melon," Chan finished for her. She threw a sweet, faux-appreciative smile over her shoulder, and then scooted down to the bottom of the bed. By this point, Ked's teeth were grinding. He's doing this for the women in his life. No other reason. To keep his sister safe, he had to make Azula well. That was it.

And if he told himself that enough times, he might just start to believe it.

He took her calf, which wasn't shapely, for its lack of use, and began to kneed it between his skilled fingers, the water over his hands glowing bright white. As waterbenders went, he was only slightly above average in strength, but even a child could probably beat him in a fight. Mostly, because everything he had ever learned had been folded into healing. So when he claimed to Azula's brother that there existed no greater waterbending healer on this Earth, it was a statement of base fact.

Most healers created pathways, conduits through which a person could more efficiently route their bodily energy, accelerating the healing process by orders of magnitude, perhaps even making it possible to heal what ought not heal at all. Then, there were people like Yugoda, his teacher. Then, there were people like him. He could feel every strand of muscle in her leg, and they were all torn to hell. His expression became severe. She had been active. He told her to rest and she... He moved the water, not to make pathways to her own pool of chi, which was no doubt impressive enough as a firebender, but instead, forcing his own out, and igniting it through her body. She gave a shudder, her eyes flaring wide, as the jolt hit her like electricity, the shredded muscles in her lower leg knitting back into stronger muscle in a matter of seconds. He felt like he'd just sprinted up a flight of stairs, but he knew he had a lot more left in him before he started getting into dangerous territory.

"What was that?" she asked, her voice a bit unsteady. Her eyes were wide, and for once, she didn't seem to be condemning him for daring to lay finger to her.

"You've never been healed before, have you?" Ked asked. Chan was walking around the room, and stopped where Ked had been standing earlier. "I hear it can be a bit of a rush. What were you doing to hurt yourself like this?"

"I am not hurt," Azula answered blankly.

"Not anymore. You almost crippled yourself," Ked said. "If you're not willing to work with me, then you're going to damage yourself, and I won't be able to help you at all."

"You don't know anything about me, _doctor_," she said bitingly.

"Or maybe I know you better than you'd like to admit," Ked answered back, his tone getting away from him.

"How dare you speak to me like that?"

"How dare you put my family at risk with your... recklessness!" Ked responded. The rational part of his brain was telling him to shut up, but he just kept going. "I could ask if you had any concept of how much danger my family was in because of you, but you'd probably just say you didn't care. So instead,_ I need to grovel and scrape to save the people I care about, while you get to treat me like a servant because that's the only way you..._"

Ked hadn't even noticed that he'd transitioned from Huojian into Yqanuac, which obviously she wouldn't be able to speak, and his ranting continued until he saw the flat look on her face, and he came to a stuttering stop.

"Are you quite finished?" Azula asked coldly. Ked let out a purging breath, then moved to her other leg, finding it in quite the same condition as the first. Another jolt of his healing expertise later, and she would be able to walk, probably even better than she had since her awakening.

"Yes. Now, I'm done," Ked said hollowly. "But you should still be more careful. If you die... Well... I can't afford to have you die."

Goddamn it, Yue, he thought to himself. I prayed it would go away. It hasn't gone away.

He immediately kicked himself for taking his Goddess' name in vain, inwardly of course, and took a step back. She got to her feet, and tested her standing. It was more sure than it had been before, especially that first night with the mirror. He'd cleaned that mess up without a word, and not replaced the mirror. If she wanted to wash her hair, she could do it in the washing room.

"Much better. I'll be in fighting form by the time..." Azula said, but she trailed off when she saw Chan, leaning against the wall, with that doll in his hands. Her eyes went wide, not cutting or angry or cruel. Afraid. She took one long stride over and snatched it away, eyes like saucers, staring at the child's toy.

"What is it, Fire Lord?" Chan asked.

"No. No, this can't be right. He wasn't here," Azula shook her head. Her eyes slammed shut, forcing out a welling of tears. "It was just a dream! It wasn't real!"

"What do you mea–" Ked began.

She cut him off by hurling the singed doll to the floor, and with a scream of... terror, he could only guess... she began to twist her arms before her in a broad, circular motion, before thrusting her hand out toward it. Ked averted his eyes for the inevitable bolt of blue fire, and tried to remember where the wash basin had been left so he could put it out, but something happened which surprised the healer. Instead of an blast of flame and debris, there was an explosion which buffeted at both men, knocking each back a step. But the effect on Azula was much more pronounced. It pulverized her offending arm, dislocating the shoulder in the instant it took to travel up toward some part of her more substantial. Then, the energy not nearly dissipated, it threw her spinning into the wall over the bed, dashing it against the wood, and dumping her onto the mattress, blood running from a gash on her forehead, curled around a broken, dislocated arm.

Weeping, openly. Babbling, incoherently.

Two men shared a glance. And a firebender nodded, for the first time understanding what had become of his Fire Lord. Ked brusquely moved the larger man aside, and did his duty. He worked to put a shattered girl back together again.

* * *

_By all means, leave a review._

**Yes, that Face Heel Turn from Han Hua seems a bit out of left field, but consider the source for a moment. The man was a Dai Li agent. And the one most trusted by Long Feng. Did you really think that he would throw away the rulership of his own nation to outsiders without holding a grudge? He is based on the character a friend of mine invented for my Scion campaign, and he always thinks a few decades down the line. He is still East Continent. He still wants Ba Sing Se to rise again under the Grand Secretariat. It's just that until recently, that was not an option. **


	3. Enemies

**The tricky part of doing action scenes is knowing that one side is a significant danger to another. In Avatar based series, especially those set Book 2 onward, can usually inject that sort of danger and panic with five letters: _AZULA_. In this, I lack that option. Rather, even though I may include her, she is not the source of that panic. Hell, if I do my job right, we're supposed to root for her. So instead, I have a conundrum; how do I make this for keeps without the standard for 'shit just got real'? Simple answer. Extrapolate on another character you're already going to root for, and sic him on her.**

**You will question Ked's behavior if you haven't read Book 1... or 2... or 3. South Water Tribe dwellings _were _one single room. There was no privacy, but at the same time, no loss of intimacy within families, so a lot of things which are considered scandalous (bathing, sex, etcetera) are done in full view of the entire family. Thus, there is very little within a family that is considered taboo, and nudity is ignored entirely in the South. The North, which didn't have those habitation strictures, didn't develop the same mentality.**

**In regards to the other folk from Children of the War: You will not be seeing Aang until at least half way through Hatred Arc. That is part of why Avatar isn't even part of the title of this story. The story is based around Azula, Sokka, Long Feng, and Jeong Jeong of the old cast, with a few others involved (Smellerbee will be significant later on). Some of the ones that haven't shown up yet will start trickling in shortly. Well, anyway, it's time to sic 'Pyramid Head' on our intrepid protagonists. You'll laugh if you both get the reference, and see who my Pyramid Head is.**

* * *

"_You had to have done something specific to end up here. You made a mistake, didn't you?" Azula asked. Smellerbee shrugged from where she was lashed to the wall. "Usually, they would just kill people like you. But they want you alive. To make an example of, I could only guess. So who did you anger enough to make your death come slowly?"_

_Smellerbee stretched as much as she could, given her bondage, and let out a dark chuckle. "Trust me, firebender, I've made more than my fair share of enemies over the last few years. I'm sure you could relate. How well do you sleep at night, knowing that as soon as the Avatar has a day where he's not trying to hold my homeland together, he'll be coming for you?"_

_That drove a spike of ice into Azula's gut, but she would never admit it. "I don't make enemies. I make targets," she said, putting on a brave front._

_Smellerbee smirked, though. "Ah. So he does scare you. I can see why, too. He's been walking the Earth for the last six years turning people into airbenders. And given what he did to your father, that must really dig at you. He wouldn't even kill you. I met that kid. He doesn't think like that. He thinks that death is absolutely the worst thing that can happen to you," her expression became dark and distant. "We both know that ain't the case."_

_"There are worse things," Azula agreed, just as darkly. For just a moment, distinctions between the women fell. Both of them royalty, cast down, hunted. Both of them prisoners, but of different cages. Not for long, though. Azula had a plan. It was a devious, outstanding plan. Revenge, power, and the ability to cast down Long Feng like the parasite that he was. "I will not be helpless. Not ever again."_

_Smellerbee's brown eyes rose up. "Ooooh. We've got a weak point. Might not want to let people see that," she snarked. Azula stared daggers at her, but the prisoner was grinning smugly. "What am I going to do about it? I ain't the Avatar, and I've got no reason to go after you. You know, personally. Being Fire Nation and all, I'll probably have to get around to killing you eventually, but there's no reason we have to be at each other's throats until then."_

_"You are a bizarre creature," Azula said, rising and beginning to pace the length of the room. It felt good to have her strength back. When she awoke, she was helpless as a puppy. It had galled her to no end that she relied upon Ked. Odd, how that changed. "You didn't answer my question, I noticed."_

_"I don't keep track of the people I've pissed off," Smellerbee noted. "I've got plenty of enemies. Some, I'm sure I'm not even aware of."_

_"And that's why you're in prison," Azula pointed out, with appropriate harshness. "You must always know everybody who wants to cause you harm. That way, you can be prepared to defend yourself from it. Taking stock of your enemies is a skill that should have been driven into you as a child, if you really were a princess like you say."_

_"Remember that I was six when you burned down my country," Smellerbee said. "Besides, that sounds a lot like institutionalized paranoia. I think I'll take a good night's sleep over constant and crippling vigilance any day."_

_"It's not paranoia when there are actually people after you," Azula said, leaning against the table built to jut from the wall._

_"That sounds like rationalization from here," the prisoner shrugged. "But it could just be the acoustics. Enemies happen. You deal with them whenever they show up. Other than that, they're not worth thinking about."_

_"Enemies are at their most dangerous when you're overlooking them," Azula said, her tone somewhere between bitter and annoyed. "I've got a lot of experience with that._"

* * *

**Chapter 3: Enemies**

* * *

Azula didn't speak. It wasn't that she couldn't. She just... didn't want to. Desperately didn't want to. The idiot and the doctor stared at her, waiting for her to make the first move, to show her hand. But silence extended longer and longer, and the men did not say a word. Neither did she.

She was ashamed of herself. She'd actually cried herself to sleep, in the middle of the day, with those two watching her. If _Father_ had seen that... Well. She was very glad that _Father_ didn't see that. And the worst part, the very worst, beyond all of her showing of fear and pain and weakness, she actually slipped so far from her control that she _thanked_ the waterbender for repairing the arm that she'd broken when her lightning ran amok. If her friends had seen that, she would have never lived it down.

And right at that moment, she remembered that she had no friends. Monsters don't get to have friends.

The silence grated. Finally, much as she couldn't stand being prey, she couldn't stand this silence. "What do you two want? To watch me while I sleep? Surely you have better things to do," she said bitingly, not moving up from where she was laid out on the bed.

"Not really, Fire Lord," Chan said uncomfortably.

"You could have seriously hurt yourself," Ked agreed. "That is an event which warrants a moment's consideration. What were you trying to do?"

"And what's with the doll?" Chan added, nodding toward the object of her outburst, which was utterly unscathed for it. She felt a wash of rage roll over her when she saw that... thing. And she didn't know why.

"Does it matter? It happened. It won't happen again," Azula said.

"Are you sure?" Ked asked. "Because I don't take these sorts of things on faith."

"Yeah, have you got some sort of problem you're not telling us about?" Chan asked. Azula's eyes flit back and forth between the two, as she had that sinking feeling in her stomach that her plan was falling apart. Just like they always did, because she couldn't do anything right. Of course nobody could love her. She failed at everything she...

Dangerous thinking. She headed off that thought before it could finish. It took a lot more effort than she thought it would, and she actually felt drained when she pushed it out of her mind. When she focused on the men again, Ked was a long stride closer to the bed. "Are you alright? You just got very pale there..."

"I'm fine!" Azula snapped. Ked shared a long look with Chan, then spoke very quietly to him for a moment. Chan looked to her, then nodded and left the room. "What are you doing? Get back here you..."

"This isn't going to work, Lady Azula," Ked said quietly. "It's almost like you're _trying_ to hurt yourself. Why?"

"Why would I do that?" Azula asked, confused. "You're not making any sense."

"And you're engaged in self destructive behavior," Ked pointed out. He squatted near the head of the bed, and she turned so she wouldn't have to look at him. "Look. I know you are firebending again."

"You want me to stop," she said, turning to stare daggers at him.

"No," Ked had a goodly amount of control to not react to the look of surprise which flit across Azula's face. "It's exercise, and that's making you stronger. It's in our combined best interests for you to be stronger. I'm asking for you to let me help you."

"You're still hiding something from me," Azula said.

Ked sighed. "We all have things we don't tell others. You want me to be an open book, then reciprocate."

"Big words for a barbarian," Azula muttered.

"Don't," he snapped. Her eyes narrowed. "You want things simple, fine. You exercise, I repair the damage you cause to yourself. You get stronger, faster. Tui La, if you actually tried working together with me, you'd probably be back at your full strength in a week. But no. You've always got to work against everybody around you. You can never take help offered at face value, even when there's no conceivable... "

"You're rambling," Azula said. The Tribesman let out a purging breath, wiping a hand across his face. She sat up, despite the burning in the torn muscles in her back, abdomen, and just about everywhere, to be honest. "But you're... not wrong."

"That sounded almost like you were agreeing with me," Ked said with a smirk. Her glare washed over him, but could not dislodge it. "We can start again after supper."

"Are you declaring my schedule, now?" she asked.

"You're going to want to do this on a full stomach," he said. "Trust me. I'm a doctor."

"I have yet to be convinced of that," she muttered. She looked to the door. "And you will be telling our dimwitted friend about this, I suppose?"

"No," Ked said, offering her a hand to help her stand, she stared at it until he pulled it back, and she stood on her own. It was like her body was on fire. And she felt, despite her shameful nap, that she hadn't slept in a month. "He doesn't need to know. In fact, better that he doesn't."

"My my, you almost sound jealous," Azula said with a smirk. It was still odd hearing her voice, sounding the way it did, trying for that sing-song quality she had so derisively mastered in her teenage years. Part of her curdled when she thought of that. She'd missed her own adolescence. She had a different body, weak and useless. She had her mother's face, more or less. Everything was conspiring against her.

"Prudence, not jealousy," Ked said, opening the door for her as she slowly made her way across the room. She actually had to stop at the threshold and steady herself. Her legs still disobeyed her. "And I don't think he's as dumb as he lets on. He likes people to underestimate him. That's why he talks about that fight with Wang Fire so often."

"And how would you know anything about a Fire Nation soldier, Tribesman?" Azula asked.

"I'm fairly good at seeing why people do what they do," Ked said with a shrug, waving her through the door. "That's one of the reasons I was assigned to you."

"One of?"

"There was also some minor blackmail on the part of the Fire Lady," Ked said. "At least, that's what Master Katara said. I'm not sure exactly what she meant," he shook his head. Mention of that woman caught Azula short. A memory floating to the surface. Zuko, Mai, and the water peasant, standing in the Fire Court. She was bending lightning... and...

No.

She pushed the memory out of her mind. Shame was there. Loss of control. She was no better than an animal. That was why she was deposed. Because she lost control, not just of the situation, but of herself at the most fundamental level. Ked's eyes narrowed. "Are you sure you don't want some help? If you fall down the stairs and break your neck..."

"What? What will you do if I break my neck?"

"Well, fix it, of course," Ked said nonchalantly, walking to the stairs. "It wouldn't be the worst damage I've repaired. Once, I managed to save a guy's life, and his head was almost completely off his body. He can't walk anymore, but he's alive, and his family still has him."

"Thats impossible," Azula said, moving down the stairs with him. "Nobody's that good of a healer."

"The best," Ked said. "Definitive article. I'm probably capable of things that other waterbenders consider impossible. Master Katara would probably flay me alive if she knew some of the things I'd happened upon."

"Useful things?" she asked. Ked shrugged. She shifted her weight slightly, and her eyes widened when she noticed that he was gently supporting her as she moved. She tore her arm away with a glare. "_Don't_ do that again."

"You're downstairs, and you did it faster than you would have alone," Ked said. He moved into the kitchen, where Chan was once again sitting back in his chair, boots up on the table. "Oh, don't bother yourself, I'll cook dinner," Ked said sarcastically.

"If you insist," Chan said, waving dismissively.

* * *

Mongke looked scornfully at the child at the back of the room. As soon as the Firemaster deposited it into the room, it moved to the darkest corner and became still. His nostrils flared as he turned to the highest man on the chain of command from the previous administration. "And what will this runt do to help us again?"

"He is easily controlled," Jeong Jeong said, turning from the door. "And with King Bumi's physical condition spiraling downward, that leaves Trama as the most powerful earthbender on this planet. Have you sent your agent?"

"Yeah," Mongke wiped at his nose with a thumb, twisting the septum ring in the process. "I'm still confused why you wanted me to..."

"Long Feng is East Continent to his bones," Jeong Jeong said. "He is only aiding us in ousting Zuko for his own ends. What those ends will be remains to be seen. He will be used until he is no longer useful. I don't doubt he is saying the exact same to his agents about us. You trust Vachir to do his duty?"

"With a grin on his face and a shaman's verve," Mongke said. Vachir had been a Yu-Yan Archer once, but while he had the skill, he lacked the mentality. He was not a man at peace. He was fast of thought and faster of deed. That made him even more dangerous as an opponent, but the other Archers didn't want to work with him. That personality quirk took him out of Shinu's hands and put him into Mongke's. "Mark my words, he can be trusted. And he'll get there an easy day ahead of what that rock-head thinks possible."

Jeong Jeong grunted. Mongke spared one last glance to the child in the corner, before walking toward the corridors overlooking the terraces of Betla. "Any word from the Fire Lord?"

Jeong Jeong twisted his lips at the mention of her. "She is... recovering. Long Feng received word from his agent with her that she has awakened, for the first time in half a decade. Still not completely coherent, but he will be striving to change that. My source says much the same thing."

"That's the best news I've heard all day," Mongke said with a smirk.

"That is _acceptable_," Jeong Jeong said. Mongke's smirk turned to a scowl. "What of the other one you found? The firebender?"

"Yeah, he's not talking, but... when did he ever?"

"And he will work for us?"

"For a pat on the head," Mongke let out a coarse laugh. "He seems to hate Zuko almost as much as you do."

"Good," Jeong Jeong said. "We will need more for when the time comes. I don't doubt that Long Feng will have many layers of defenses. We need to be able to push through all of them. What about the woman?"

Mongke scowled. "Still looking for her. And the kid?"

"Trama will listen to anybody giving orders. The child's mind is as good as broken, which makes it malleable, and thus useful," Jeong Jeong said. He paused, a distant look in his eyes. "It is remarkable how easy it is to mold a young mind. Just how much they are willing to _forget_."

Jeong Jeong walked away. Mongke didn't know what to make of that last part. But Mongke had a job to do. It was time to cause a bit of a ruckus. Riots were just his kind of ruckus.

* * *

The look on Ursa's eyes was cruel, as Azula was biting back tears. Her hand lashed out, slapping the girl across the face, sending her down to the black stone floors. "Get out of my sight you useless child," her mother hissed. The voice didn't sound right, but the dream-logic overwhelmed any coherent understanding. Her legs, short for her age, quickly pulled back under her and she ran away, trying not to cry. Failing.

The halls seemed to loom, more than likely because she seemed to be about five or six in this dream. She ran, to the only place she could think of that would be safe. Zuzu's room. She pushed hard on the door, and it rattled. Was it locked? When did Zuzu ever lock his door? When was he capable of it? She pulled hard on the handle, the door jumped and danced in its frame, but it wouldn't open. This wasn't right! This hadn't happened. Wait. Why did she think this hadn't... the dream ate the doubt, and reigned supreme again. There was a flicker of movement, and Azula was suddenly passed the door, that oppressive helplessness somehow barricaded on the other side.

Zuko, skin almost deathly pale, turned to his little sister. His eyes grew wide, and he struggled to the side of the bed. "Azula, are you alright?" he asked, as she crashed into a hug. Despite two years of difference, he wasn't much bigger than her. All the physicians said that there was a good chance he wouldn't live to see his next birthday. They said he was lucky to be born at all. She didn't want to let him go. "You don't need to cry. I'm right here. I'll keep you safe."

This is absurd, Azula thought as the dream began to buckle. Zuzu never cared about me. All he ever did was take mother's attention. The dream shattered, and Azula was alone, in the darkness. She tried to move, but her arms were lashed above her head, to a frame hanging from the ceiling. The room stank, of sweat and body odor and urine, and something else which she couldn't put a name to. A light spilled into the room. "What are you doing? This is... wrong! You can't do this to her!"

There was a figure, standing in the door. A voice came from behind him, making him turn back. "You are in error. He may do whatever he pleases. You will not speak of this to anybody."

"The Hell I won't! This is sick!" he shouted.

"So be it," it was definitely Jeong Jeong's voice. There came a stuttering bang, and a bolt of lightning slammed into the man, sending him sliding into the room. It was a boy, probably thirteen at the oldest, lean and of dark, Embiar complexion. She didn't recognize him. At the same time, she did, but couldn't say from where. The gaping wound in the center of his chest smoked, and his amber eyes stared lifelessly. "That is the last one. She is alone."

"Because nobody can ever love you," a husky voice whispered into her ear, as she felt a hand grasp unkindly at her breast. A shard of terror tore through her, and she let out a scream.

Azula's eyes slammed open with a gasp, sputtering and even snorting as the water had slid into her nostrils. She sat forward, coughing until her throat was clear. Golden eyes swept around the room, reminding herself that she was, in fact, in that abandoned inn deep in the forests of Grand Ember. With a shudder, as the dream began to slip away, she moved back, stretching out in the almost scaldingly hot bathwater. She had fallen asleep in her bath. That's all it was. A nightmare. Nothing more.

She couldn't remember the last time she _hadn't_ had a nightmare.

Despite her initial trepidation, the doctor had been as good as his word. He would wait as she went through her firebending exercises, and when she was at the point of collapsing from exhaustion, he would rejuvenate her. At first, she could firebend for minutes. By the third day, minutes became hours. By this morning, she could firebend at full strength for half the morning, and still be able to walk home. It was visibly taking its toll on him, which rose concerns. She wasn't to her former strength and endurance. Not yet. But he was helping her... No. She was getting there for herself, and she was using him to do so. Nobody _helped_ Azula.

She soaked in the water briefly, but she knew she had already wasted enough time. Even if she still felt oddly, and undescribably sullied, she was as clean as she was going to get. Any enjoyment would be needless lallygagging. She pulled herself up and out of the tub, pulling the bathrobe over her body with an unnoticed measure of haste. She also felt very uncomfortable wearing this. Not because it was, in all probability, the clothing of a dead woman. No, for some reason, the short sleeves, reaching only half way to her elbow, made her extremely uneasy. Shoving that irrational sensation aside, she pushed open the door into the cleaning room just beyond where the tub was set. She saw Ked immediately, waiting there, his head down as he flipped slowly through a book resting in his lap that he'd found at some point.

And the barbarian was stark naked.

In her mind, Azula had two conflicting impulses. One was to fly into a rage and burn him where he sat. The other, just as strong, was to scream like a child and flee. She decided that neither would do. Ked looked up. "From the noise you were making, I thought you were swimming laps," he said with a slight smile. She glared at him.

"Why are you _naked_?"

"I was about to take a bath," Ked said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Why? Are you not done with it?"

Azula tapped her fingers against her arm. "Why are you naked _now_?"

Ked stared briefly, and then hung his head. "Right. Fire Nobility," he shook his head. "I keep forgetting how twitchy you upper crust people are about these things," Ked said. He rose, and she made very sure to track his eyes as he slapped the book closed. "_I_ will be having a bath now. Are you going to move or are you just going to stare?" he asked, a smug look on his face.

"I've seen better," she lied. In truth, he was probably the first grown man she'd seen naked. Contrary to her intended effect of discomfort and shame, Ked laughed, and moved past her into the bath room. She turned in bafflement as he closed the door, shaking her head as she walked into the main hall. "That man must be insane."

"Sometimes I figure that myself," Chan said from the table, where he was running a whet-stone over his knife. "What did he do this time?"

"He was..." Azula shook her head. "It doesn't matter. When are we leaving this place? It is beginning to chafe."

"Soon," Chan said, motioning to another seat. She remained standing. "Somebody is going to come soon, tell us where Zuko's not looking. Then, we just stay away from his airships, and we'll be in Betla before you know it."

"And what happens when we get there?"

"Hell if I know," Chan said with a shrug. It was a good thing he was pretty because he had about half the brains someone in his position needed to stay alive. Chan began to launch into one of his inane little stories, which Azula just tuned out. The dreams were still bothering her. She knew that they shouldn't, but every time she woke up, she felt like she'd been beaten by a stick, both physically and psychically. While she never turned in until her body demanded it, she was waking up exhausted more and more often. It felt like there was a dam inside her mind and it was creaking dangerously close to simply breaking.

She didn't like the sensation.

The soft rasp of metal against stone filled a silence for a moment, and she realized he had come to a halt in whatever moronic tale he was telling. He gestured lightly at her. "So. Where did you get those scars?" he asked, not looking up.

"What scars?" Azula asked grimly.

"The ones on your arms," he clarified.

"I don't have any scars on..." she snapped, but a flick of her eyes caught sight of the hard, white lines reaching around both forearms, cruel and irregular and old. She stared at them for just a moment. Scars. Why hadn't she noticed them? For an instant, her mind shifted backward, to another bath, six years ago by one measure, effectively about a month from hers. Alone, the entire Royal Palace abandoned. Her naked body chilling as she tried to see her own back in the mirror. Pulling on that robe so fast, as though trying to deny something she _knew_. And then, her _father_ opened the door, and...

She shook her head. Don't go there. It isn't safe. "I got these hunting for the Avatar," Azula lied. "_He_ might have been a naïve child, but he surrounded himself with cruel and vicious killers. Tribesmen and psychopaths. There were times I was lucky to escape with my life."

Chan stopped sharpening his blade. "I hadn't heard that. In that play, you had them on the ropes all the time."

"Play?" she asked. Demanded, more like.

"I guess you can't believe everything you see on stage," Chan said idly, testing the edge with his thumb. He turned, and Azula looked at her arms again. She couldn't have gotten these fighting the Avatar. Her armored bracers would have covered the forearms completely. And they were faded somewhat, almost a decade old if she had to guess. She would have remembered getting them. They were too extensive, running practically elbow to wrist without a patch of unblemished skin. But every time she felt like she was about to remember their source, her entire mind recoiled. There was no point thinking about. It was all needlessly confusing and didn't serve any purpose. She marched up the stairs, putting the fact that she'd just taken a bath out of her mind, and entered the attic, closing the door behind her. She lowered herself into a wide stance.

In her mind, she could almost hear Jeong Jeong grunting as she began, admonishing her stance. Shouting 'Wider!' at her whenever she moved to the kindle stance, as though having her spread so far that her posterior would touch the floor would be the only thing which would satisfy him. She glanced around the room. Alone. She was alone. And she had the fire. Nobody could take that away from her. Not ever.

* * *

Blue eyes peered from under the edge of a broad pan hat, as he squatted on the forest floor. The conditions couldn't have been better to hold a trail; if he'd have known what he was looking for, he probably would have found her days ago. The rains had softened the ground, so that the carriage wheels dug in deeply, and when it dried out again, the ruts remained in this long abandoned stretch of nowhere.

"That place just seems to attract evil like a magnet," Sokka said, looking up the road. The last time he'd been to this town was years ago, during the last year of the Weary War, with his sister and his friend and the woman who'd become his wife and the Avatar. Six years felt a lot longer. He idly wondered if her mummified corpse was still out there. It would serve her right if it was. Sokka stood, and moved to the side of the Rhino. It was still more or less wild, but considering what he had planned for it, wildness was a virtue.

Sokka vaulted up onto the creature's back, and it gave an annoyed shrug, but Sokka guided the beast forward. He couldn't explain how he commanded these creatures, but from the first time he accidentally landed on one during the Annexation of Chin, he'd might as well have been born in the saddle. He spurred the creature forward, through the trail, to the abandoned inn once run by his hate-maddened countryman. Until his sister killed her.

"You should have hid your tracks better, Ked," Sokka said, a blood-drunk grin coming to his face. "I taught you better than that."

* * *

Ked cracked his weary joints as he pulled his pants back on. Inside, he was kicking himself for not remembering the way some Fire Nationals tended to get squirrelly when people were nude about them. He could empathize with her. Despite being in this country for four years, there were still aspects that he hadn't figured out. But then again, he'd been living _on his own_ here since he was sixteen, so didn't have a lot of practice. The only people he'd interacted with on a regular basis were the sick, the injured, and the mad.

It was an odd sensation that Ked felt, as he began to dress himself. It felt as though he were in two places at once. Not only could he feel all of the bathroom around him, with its textured stone floor and wet warmth, but he could also feel the dry heat and wooden planks of the attic as well. Yugoda had explained that if he consistently used his more expedient form of healing on one person, then eventually there would be a sort of feedback, since so much of his own spirit energy had been imparted through the healing. It would slowly fade in time, but it made waking up tricky, since he tended to roll the wrong way out of bed and end up wedged against the wall. As it was, he remained distinctly aware of Azula in a way that she probably would not be happy about, if she'd known.

He grabbed his shirt and slung it casually over his shoulder. When he slid the door open to the hallway, he heard a voice he didn't expect. It was a man, but quiet, quite the opposite of Chan's bravado. It almost sounded like a snake grew legs and called itself a man. It set Ked on edge, so he paused briefly to throw his shirt on more properly, as though that would offer him some measure of protection, somehow. Chan was speaking to the stranger, in the kitchen of course because that was where everybody gathered in this building.

Ked walked in mid sentence, and both turned to him. The stranger was probably Embiar by complexion, but that was a guess, because his pallor was more grey than brown. His hair was pulled back into a style quite unlike the usual phoenix tails or topknots of the West Continent, and he had fine, narrow features. Everything about the man was narrow, almost a direct counterpoint to Chan's mesomorphic build. Even his voice was narrow, oddly soft considering that there was something about him that set the damp hairs on the back of Ked's neck standing stark upright. "So," the stranger said. "This is little toad that rock-head got to pull off the abduction. I have to say, I'm not impressed."

Chan actually looked a bit surprised at the man's harsh word. "Ked, this is Vachir. He's come with news from the front."

"There is no front," Vachir said. "Not yet. All in due time. Where is she? You said she was by-times awake? I would like to see this."

"We're leaving?" Ked asked, nailing down the point. Vachir leaned back for a moment, then nodded, suspiciously. "Good. I'll collect the Princess."

"It's been a long time since she was a princess," Vachir said, his tone... odd. Ked turned back, looking at the man, who's expression had grown distant. There was almost something like lust, there. A perverse and uncomfortable one. Chan backed a step away. "But she'll still be useful. There's always a use for people like her."

"I don't appreciate you talking about her like that," Chan said, taking the words from Ked's mind and giving them voice. Vachir snapped to him.

"And I don't appreciate you wasting the Firemaster's time. Get the girl, and let's go," Vachir said peevishly. He leaned against the back wall, looking direly impatient. Ked had a notion he should be able to identify the man, who he was, where he'd come from, but the information just didn't seem to coalesce. Ked quietly backed away, letting the two hot-headed Fire Nationals deal with their squabble. Just when he thought things couldn't get any worse, somebody else showed up.

Well, he amended 'couldn't get any worse' when he felt something odd through his bare feet. A shuddering. Ked leaned, pressing an ear to the wall, and could feel the vibrations, harsh and irregular, and getting closer. "Why does it sound like a Rhino is...?" Ked asked himself, then his eyes went wide and he dove into the linen cupboard. And lucky that he had, because a feral Komodo Rhinoceros burst through the front doors, tearing apart the walls as it charged down the hallways. The two men in the kitchen screamed in alarm as the beast smashed the table to flinders, and spun wildly, hurling Vachir out a window in the process. Chan was knocked to the floor and trampled, before the beast smashed down the pantry door, and the one beyond it, running to freedom. Ked crawled out of the cupboard, looking at the destruction.

"What _the hell _was that?" Ked shouted. Ked got his answer when a wax-covered bladder landed next to his foot. His eyes went wide, and he quickly hurled the bladder into the bath room, barely getting the door closed before it exploded, releasing a stinking, stinging gas. That was a tear-bomb. That was Water Tribe technology.

"EVERYBODY GET OUT!" Ked screamed, before the gas leaking around the door began to infest his nose and throat, reducing him to a paroxysm of coughing. He stumbled back into the kitchen, and hauled the firebender to his feet, pulling water from the pump in the pantry to quickly set his broken ribs. He didn't get very far when another waxed bladder landed in the hallway. This time, Ked wasn't nearly close enough to intercept it, so turned away and covered his ears. As expected, the thing went off with a loud bang and a flash of light, which he, prepared, neither saw nor particularly heard. Chan was stunned by it, however. So when a man walked in, club in hand down that hallway, it was only Ked who responded.

Inside, he kicked himself a thousand times for not paying more attention when Pakku was trying to drive the actual martial-arts part of the elemental martial arts. Mostly, because when Ked tried to lash out with a water whip, it ended up snapping into the wall next to the man walking calmly into the building, as inevitable as death itself. He was wearing a veil over his mouth, and bulky goggles over his face, but Ked recognized those blue eyes, that tall, wiry build. He was his father's son, Sokka, but taller, darker complected for his years in the warm sun. And now, he was pulling a sling from his side.

Ked wasn't fast enough by a half to get out of the way of the stone which the Chief's son hurled with enormous power, slamming it into the center of Ked's chest. He felt his heart miss a beat, and he fell backward into the hole where the counter used to be. "_Wait_!" Ked shouted. "_This isn't what it looks like!_"

If Sokka heard, he didn't care. He readied another stone, and this time, it was Chan who came to Ked's rescue, deflecting the stone aimed at Ked's face with a chair. The wood splintered under the assault. Chan then lashed out, precise and brilliant flames cutting through the distance as the firebender moved through his Katas. Sokka, not being a bender of any description, dove flat to avoid the first, then kipped over the second was of flame along the floor, fumbling for something at his belt.

"Get the Fire Lord and run!" Chan shouted. "I'll hold him off!"

Chan advanced toward Sokka, and punched out a brutal wave of flame, one which practically ran floor to ceiling. Sokka reacted fast, hurling a waterskin at the conflagration. That wouldn't nearly snuff the flames, Ked knew, still struggling to get to his feet and get his wind back into his lungs. But that skin didn't even seem to try to put out the flames. No, on the contrary: it exploded into a wash of flame that leapt backward toward the firebender, the sweet smell of burning kerosene in the air, before it covered Chan, setting the firebender ironically on fire. Ked pulled the water from the pump again, and sent it forward as an unaimed, blunt surge. Sokka slammed the kitchen door closed, and wasted the attacks' effect against it, before opening it with a kick and sending another stone into Ked's chest from his sling.

"_You didn't really think you'd get away with this, did you_?" Sokka finally spoke. Even with the waves of pain radiating out from the rib the ellipsoid stone had broken, he could recognize that tone. The last person he'd heard it in was Uncle Bato. It was the voice of a man Blood-Drunk.

"_Sokka, please, listen to me_," Ked croaked, scooting away, toward the pantry which the Rhino had turned into a path to the outside. Sokka didn't seem to want to listen, though, and he unhooked his club from where he'd set it before, wrapping his fingers expectantly around the handle. Ked could almost see the smile, pitiless and maddened, come to his countryman's face. The club raised...

And then Sokka got a flaming punch to the face. Chan, still on fire, caught Sokka's arm and neck under one beefy arm of his own, and began to repeatedly drive blows into the Tribesman's stomach. Sokka twisted, lashing out with a back-elbow to the side of Chan's head. Chan staggered away, and Sokka turned his attention to the smoldering, burnt firebender who now staggered into the dining area. Ked pulled his battered body after. He reached out, feeling the water hanging from a skin on Sokka's back. He pulled, and the water, a heavy brine by the feel of it, came away from the Tribesman.

Sokka turned, but not to attack Ked, as he suspected. Instead, he dipped low, as the window to this room exploded inward, lightly yellow glass scattering across the floor, and Vachir made his dramatic re-entry. Even as he entered the room, his bow snapped and an arrow shot forth, directly at where Sokka's heart would have been had he not ducked low. Sokka pulled yet a third waterskin from his belt, and uncorked it with his teeth through the veil. Vachir had another arrow nocked before he even landed, and he was drawing it back as Sokka back-handedly splashed the contents of the skin across the archer's face. Vachir's hands went to his eyes, dropping the bow as he staggered away, clawing at them.

Sokka turned briefly, forcing the skin up under the veil and taking what seemed to be a hearty swig of whatever was in that flask, before hooking it back on his belt. All of this happened in the amount of time it took Ked to pull Sokka's water into a sphere before Ked's hands. Ked lashed out, and Sokka moved to the side, letting the orb of water smash into Chan. It extinguished the flames, mercifully, but served else only to knock the firebender down. Ked winced, pulling the water back and trying for another attack. Sokka hooked a chair with his foot and hurled it at Ked, battering his arms and knocking him to the floor next to the door.

"Who is this guy?" Chan screamed from the floor. Ked couldn't answer. Not in time, anyway. Chan, though, didn't wait. He lashed forward with a bolt of fire, which Sokka once again dodged. Ked finally had the time to pull water from the Rhino-trough which was right outside, and slammed it through the window Vachir was now crawling under, gathering up his weapon. Sokka turned between the wash of water and another bolt of flame coming at him. Sokka then stayed still, letting Ked's assault wash him aside, and Chan's bolt of fire raced toward Ked's face.

Between the fire Chan started and Sokka made worse, and the bombs set off in the hallway, the building was already aflame. But in the back, animal part of his mind, he knew the rest of him was close at hand. He felt, rather than saw, Azula's proximity, when the blast of fire coming at Ked was swallowed up in a greater conflagration, a swirl of electric blue flames; despite the chaos, he'd known as sure as his own breathing it would be as Azula skidded to a halt in the room, blue fire leaking from her fingertips. She looked down at Ked, and was about to ask something, when a boot burst through the plaster of the wall, catching her in the stomach and forcing her away.

"We've got to run! He's trying to kill..." Ked gulped past the ache in his chest. Azula got a look of unbounded rage on her face, and she lashed out, her stance low, at the wall. The entire structure exploded outward, raining wood and plaster into the hallway. She was already soaked in sweat, and the way she was moving, he could tell she was already exhausted. Of course, Sokka would pick the perfect moment to attack them, when they were all distracted and Azula was just finishing her firebending exercises. Acrid smoke began to billow into the room, as the wall to the bath room crumbled and the smoke inside was given freedom to flow as it pleased.

Sokka, seemingly the only one not hindered by the smoke, hurled a third bomb at the group. Ked tried to throw it into the kitchen, but it still exploded next to Azula, covering her in sticky green muck. With only one arm free she lashed out at Sokka, a whip of fire tearing apart the door he was hiding behind. He twisted out of his cover, hurling the light, wooden club at Azula. It caught her across the upper chest, knocking her backward toward the sticky mess which would hold her trapped. Her free hand whipped around, and became lodged on the green gunk, pinning it across her body. She was helpless. Ked grabbed her and arrested her fall. "We need to run!" Ked shouted over the melee.

Azula stared hatefully at the other tribesman, who now pulled a shining white sword and continued his advance. Ked held out his hands, trying to buy a moment while Azula backed toward the window behind him. He hadn't noticed that her foot was stuck to the floor. "_We can talk about this! We don't need to kill each other_!" Ked shouted. Sokka's answer was swift and shocking. A flicker of light in the hellish, burning inn triggered some instinct, buried deep in Ked's brain. Otherwise, it would have been much worse. As it was, a wash of blood splashed across Ked's face as he threw himself backward, pain only starting to tear at him when he realized that Sokka's white blade was now stained crimson, and most of Ked's left hand was lying on the floor, severed cleanly. Ked was too shocked to scream.

Vachir ran forward, dodging the swing of the blade, which would have taken him at the neck, and tackled the Tribesman through the pantry and into the side yard. Chan, in an obvious amount of pain for his burns, still seemed the most clear headed. Ked was strangely calm. Or at least not panicking. Probably in a degree of shock. Considering the amount of blood he was losing, not surprising.

"Get off your ass, Tribes..." Chan shouted, but then noticed that he was standing on Ked's hand. He picked it up, looking a bit pale. He grabbed Azula's stuck foot and heaved, pulling it out of its boot, leaving said boot glued to the floor, more gunk still splashed up to her hip. Chan grabbed Ked by the back of the neck and threw him out the window, pulling the mostly stuck-together Azula behind him, and practically manhandled both into the carriage. Ked stared at his hand for a long, dumb moment, before painfully putting it on his stump, and letting the water in his blood connect the two. It was a rough fix, but it would hold his wounded extremity on until he could think clearly, and heal properly, again.

"What the hell just happened to us?" Azula demanded. Ked shook his head. Couldn't think. Ked didn't know if Azula would attack him, but he really hoped she wouldn't, because as he passed out, he noted that his face was falling directly into her lap.

* * *

Sokka rolled to a stop, kicking the grey skinned man off of him, pulling his gas-mask off to get a better look. He didn't doubt the others were taking the opportunity to run. The sensible part of his mind was reeling over the fact that Azula was cogent enough to try to attack him. It had been a long time since he'd fought her; seven years since she'd gone sickhouse on them all in the Earth Kingdom. She was supposed to be helpless.

Right now, Sokka didn't care. Right now, that upwelling of numbness washed over him, and a blood-drunk grin was on his face. Ked hurt Zuko. Ked needed to die. And so did anybody who got in the way. Sokka always had a very simple view of things, when he got down to it. Friends are protected, enemies destroyed. Sokka flipped around, and put his blade in front of him. It was just in time, too, since the archer somehow managed to retain his bow, spin, and fire an arrow at him.

Sokka could have done this blindfolded. A twist of his wrist, and the blade slit the incoming arrow in twain, a half falling harmlessly to each side of him. Sokka began to run forward, raising Piandao's famous sword. The archer moved faster than he thought possible, dodging and weaving Sokka's strikes. One of them managed to slash the bow in half, but the archer responded by delivering a brutal kick to the side of Sokka's knee, making him stagger. When he got a bit of distance, he pulled out something from his belt, and hurled it at the Tribesman. Sokka's eyes went wide, the blood-drunkedness vanishing in an instant as that familiar cutting of the air hit his ears. No. It couldn't be.

Sokka threw himself the ground as the blue metal of the boomerang slashed through the air where his head had been. Sokka felt a grin pull at his face, but this wasn't the same maniac, blood thirsty grin before. This was utter, childlike joy. Sokka quickly fumbled at his belt for the fingerless gloves he'd used to wear all the time, but for years, had no reason to. He got one onto his left hand just in time to hear the cutting spinning back around. He reached back without even looking, and caught it by ear.

"Do you have any idea how long I have been looking for this?" Sokka asked. He let out a braying, joyous laugh. "Ah, boomerangs _always_ come back."

The archer looked a bit stunned that Sokka could catch the weapon so effortlessly. How could he not? Sokka was practically born with this thing in his hand. He damned near wanted to kiss it. Instead, he looked at the archer, and took a moment to glance over his shoulder at the burning inn.

"Wow. That happened in a hell of a hurry, didn't it?" Sokka asked, a smirk on his face. That place should have been put to torch years ago, when they cleared out after Hama's death. He faced the archer. "So. What's your involvement in this? Come to keep the Princess out of the Fire Lord's clutches?"

"Like I would discuss this with you, barbarian," the archer hissed. Sokka laughed again.

"That's _lord_ barbarian, to you," Sokka said. Quite true. He was a lord in these parts.

"You will never be nobility," his opponent said, spitting on the ground. The two continued to circle each other. "You should have never been allowed into the Families."

"Oh, now that's just hurtful," Sokka chided, brandishing his long lost boomerang. "Are you going to tell me, or am I going to have to... extract it from you?"

The archer smiled a dark, grim smile. "I've heard all about your tortures, but you won't get a word from me. Besides, did you really think it would be that easy to capture me?"

Sokka shrugged, then, hurled his boomerang at the archer. To Sokka's amazement, the archer actually managed to throw himself aside, taking the opportunity to make a break for the trees. Sokka sighed, catching his wayward weapon when it returned. The archer was gone. "Well, that was a bust," Sokka muttered. But the smile came back to his face, as he hugged his weapon. Oh, but it was good to have this back in his hands. He felt naked without it. Like he'd just spent the last six years naked. And not in the fun way.

Sokka tucked his boomerang into his bag, making a point to get its old case when he returned to Grand Fire. Zuko did say that he'd leave a room prepared for him. He smiled, walking away from the carnage he created. Who knows? He might even get to the capital of the Fire Nation before his wife. It would be nice to surprise _her_, for once, instead of the other way around.

* * *

"You're worrying too much," Mai said simply, appearing at Zuko's side out of nowhere as she usually did. He really wondered how she pulled that off, considering she was heavily pregnant, and not walking with her usual grace. Zuko slipped an arm around her waist his fingers splaying across the side of her belly.

"You always say that," Zuko answered.

"Well, you are," Mai didn't alter her tone one whit. "It doesn't look like you've slept in a week. You need to take better care of yourself. I'm not going to let you work yourself to death and leave me to look after three children."

"Then I'll make a point of not dying," Zuko said sarcastically.

"You'd better," Mai said, giving him a cool glance. Mai was an extremely cool woman. Even her warmth was cool. But unlike most of the people whom Zuko dealt with on a daily basis, and many of the people that he'd grown up with, whatever warmth she ever showed, even if somewhat cool, was always genuine.

"How are Yuuki and Kimiko?" Zuko asked. A small smile came to his wife's face.

"They miss you. Like always," she answered.

Zuko shook his head. "I don't know how Ozai made it look so contemptuously easy," he muttered. "I have to work until I'm dropping from exhaustion, and he ran this country with a half-hour's work and a few vague threats."

"It's because he didn't care about anything," Mai said. "He didn't care if every prefecture and province was buried in corruption, because it didn't matter to him. And it made people angry, and he was good at directing anger onto other targets."

"So you're saying that I'm setting my sights too high?" he asked.

"Just... pace yourself. Nobody's expecting you to reverse everything your... predecessor did in a few short years."

"So you keep telling me," Zuko said, giving her a light squeeze. She smiled briefly again. Contrary to her complaints, she _had_ made the Fire Palace much homier since she'd taken over the décor. Zuko paused briefly, a smile coming to his face as he could hear children's laughter in the palace. His children's laughter. It had been so long since people laughed in these halls. For decades, this was a place of silence and fear.

"There's something you should know," Mai said idly. "Somebody unexpected has come to the palace. She seemed especially... happy... to see me."

"Ty Lee?" Zuko asked.

"She's still on her way," Mai dismissed. Zuko frowned.

"Then who?"

The question was answered when a woman in clothes superficially resembling a blue parka leaned out of a door, a grin on her dark face. "Ready or not, here I come!" she said. She was about to run after Zuko's children, when she noticed the presence of the Fire Lord. Her grin vanished, and she put on a much more blank expression. She gave a nod. "Fire Lord Zuko," she said respectfully.

"Master Katara," Zuko said, with equal formality. But beside them both, Mai was rolling her eyes at the pomp. Zuko smirked, and opened his arms. Katara walked up and gave Zuko a brief hug. "It's good to see old faces. How's Aang?"

"Often absent," Katara muttered. She took a step back. "But considering things in the East, I don't think I should complain."

"Oh, you definitely should," Mai said, accepting a hug from Katara as well. "Otherwise, he'll start to think of you as a rug and you'll never have his respect again. Lose a man's love if you must, but _never_ lose his respect."

"What an Azuli thing to say," Zuko said. Both women rolled their eyes. "Come on. I don't want the children to spend the whole day in hiding."

* * *

Jeong Jeong's amber eyes narrowed the instant he entered the room. A soft chuckle acknowledged that he was not alone. His body was still aching from his little escapade at the insane asylum, but he dropped into a horse stance, flame pooling over his hands, and illuminated the room.

Another was sitting in his favorite chair. He was old, possibly as old as Jeong Jeong, both white of hair and stubble. His eyes, though, were blue, and his complexion far too fair to be a Tribesman. The Firemaster also wagered that this man's hair, before it became white, was the color of copper. Whaleshman. "What are you doing in my chair, degenerate?" Jeong Jeong demanded quietly, dangerously.

"Really? That's no way to speak to old friends," The Whaleshman answered, opening up his arms and springing to his feet. "Come on, give me a hug."

"I will do no such thing."

"I suggest you give me a hug," the mirth in the Whaleshman's voice turned from a perversion of amusement into something threatening. Jeong Jeong twisted a hand around through a broad circle, and lightning trailed his fingers. His expression curdled. "Oh, very well. It has been a while, hasn't it?"

"Almost forty years," Jeong Jeong said. He pointed at the abomination. "You got old. And your promises proved to be quite hollow."

The man was not really a man. He was a shell, inside which lived something foul and unspeakable. There existed no words in Huojian to describe him, save for the one he gave, his name: Irukandji. He shrugged, dismissively. "First of all, I'm just as pretty as I've ever been. Blame the shaman for going and getting all... wrinkly. And for the record, I gave you exactly what you asked for. It was _your_ fault you managed to fuck it all up. Hell, I even threw you a freebie and poisoned the kid's _soul_. If you can't get a win out of that, it's your own fault. But I have to say, it did give me access to some delicious fear. I noticed last chapter you found the child?"

"Speak clearly or leave. I know how to hurt you," Jeong Jeong said, ignoring the bizarre tendencies of speech the creature adhered to. He was about as human as the chair he had vacated, but that was no excuse to be ambiguous. Irukandji laughed, waving him away.

"Oh, you. I didn't come here to be threatened. I came because I was feeling a bit... peckish."

Jeong Jeong stared at the host, the spirit which stared through stolen eyes. "What do you want, creature?"

Irukandji smiled then, cocky, arrogant, a young man's smile on an old man's face. "My face on the gold coin, but that's a long term thing. Terror, confusion, destruction, all means to an end. Omnipresence, that'll be nice. But," he leaned a bit closer, and his grin stretched too wide, showing too many teeth, "what I want a bit sooner, J.J., is a crack at my old client."

* * *

**Allow me to introduce myself: I'm a spirit of wealth and taste, and Irukandji is my name. He does tend to get away from me, that one.**

_Leave a review, if you please._


	4. The Monster Sleeps

**I had one hell of a close call. About a day after posting chapter 3, my computer shat itself and died, which left me in a bit of a tricky position, as without a computer, I can't actually do any writing/posting/HOLY SHIT A MONTH'S WORTH OF WRITING IS GONE! Well, I managed to Frankenstein my computer, not much and not long but long enough to drag this story kicking and screaming out of the corpse of its mother computer, like delivering a live baby via Caesarian from a dead woman. So that's a good thing, I suppose. Losing the next seven chapters would have put a severe damper on my enthusiasm for this project.**

**As for the questions brought up by the reviewer last chapter: Azula's scars were distinctly mentioned in The Beach... After I changed it because I realized the exact same thing you did. Azula always defaults to outfits which cover her arms and back, unconsciously trying to deny that there is anything there by not having to look at it. Zuko only got a glimpse of her damage during The Beach, and her bitchiness immediately halted all further attempts to dig at that wound.**

**It's also amusing to see what happens when Azula tries to act normal. And by amusing, I mean deeply sad. When she is trying for intimidating and threatening, she hits that, but she also crosses the line over into seductive, whether she wants to or not. Why? Because she feels powerful. In control. But when she actually _tries _for seductive, she plunges into the uncanny valley so deep that the first instinct in the lizard brain of people interacting with her is to run the hell away. And probably safer for it. And the worst part of all? Even though she doesn't realize it, she's doing that on purpose.**

**Two things about this chapter: The Gaang never came here, so the problem didn't get solved. Azula treading the ground that they should have might seem like an old, jaded trick, but I try to do it justice. Especially how she rationalizes it to herself. Second; after Chan got nut-kicked by Sokka during the 'Sokka Kai', he learned that if he was going to be an effective fighter, he was going to need to come up with his own style. Thus, Chan came up with the equivalent to Katara's waterbending. It's rough, dirty, more streetfighting thuggery than elegant and sweeping, and involves a lot of elbows to the face. Chan is a very good soldier, and any time he isn't ambushed, he can easily hold his own even against numerous opponents.**

**I also realized as I continued writing, that while Sokka hasn't got much of an opinion about Ked, Ked_ really hates _Sokka. It wasn't something I intended, but it came about as the two interacted with each other, and I couldn't deny it anymore. Finally, Zuko's younger daughter came out adorable.**

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* * *

_

_"It doesn't change the fact that you've spent the better part of your life killing people," Azula pointed out. "My people, no less. Even if you don't, most would still call you a terrorist."_

_Smellerbee once again shook her head. "Unlike Jet, I don't really care what you call me. I just do what I do because I'm not good at anything else. A lifetime ago, I was the only daughter of Jiang Bei. Now, I'm a soldier. I've spent the last seventeen years as a soldier. It's the one thing, the __only__ thing that I'm good for."_

_"That sounds like rationalization where I'm sitting," Azula smirked. "But that could just be the acoustics."_

_"Ha ha ha." Smellerbee said sarcastically at having her words thrown back at her. Azula's brow drew down._

_"Wait a minute... Bi Bei?"_

_"Oh, don't get me started," Smellerbee muttered. "Why do you think I took up Smellerbee? It's not exactly the most attractive name."_

_Azula couldn't help but chuckle though. 'Bi Bei'. Ha. "Still," Azula said when the moment of amusement passed. "Perhaps you should be apologizing to me for killing my countrymen."_

_"You'll get that when you apologize for killing mine," Bi countered._

_"And I won't because __I__ didn't kill __your__ parents. You, on the other hand, did kill Fire Nation citizens."_

_Bi looked a bit morose, sliding back down the wall. "It's not like I had a lot of options."_

_Azula's comment was cut off when the door banged open. She unconsciously dropped into a wide stance, a lancet of fire jetting from two fingertips, but moved to a more relaxed pose when she saw that it was only Ked. A month ago, it would have galled her that he snuck up on her. It would have galled her more that she hadn't been paying attention because she was involved in conversation. A month could make a hell of a difference._

_"That didn't take long," Azula muttered. Ked dropped himself onto the bench, his hands laced through his hair as he leaned forward, not staring at anything._

_"That had to have been the most nerve-wracking cup of tea I've ever had in my entire life," Ked muttered, scratching at the still fairly fresh scar on his neck._

_"So he does not know?" Azula asked. Ked started at her, then looked back to Bi, sitting in the cell, and shook his head. "Good. Then the plan continues per the scenario."_

_Bi raised a brow at that. "What have you got cooked up?"_

_"Nothing much, just supplanting a puppetmaster and rising to power on nothing but my own strength and brilliance," Azula said casually, inspecting her nails. Still too short. She still never noticed as she chewed on them. She sat down beside Ked, folding her hands into her lap. "But what about you? Are you just planning to rot in that cell?"_

_Bi sighed. "Maybe that would be the best thing," she said. "I'm a plague. I know it. Everybody else knows it. That's why Shot left. The only thing I can do is kill."_

_Once again, a month made a lot of difference. Six years made more. "Why?" she asked. "Why are you so certain that you can't do anything right? Everybody is capable of a lot more than they give themselves credit for," Azula said, aware how bizarre such sentiments sounded, especially coming from her. But she had proof of their validity._

_Ked grunted. "We've all got potential for great good or great evil, and it only manifests in our actions. You claim to not have a choice," he said, leaning back. "But I think it's just that you were never given the right choice. The right person in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world. Even the villain is allowed to be a hero sometimes."_

_And even the monster, Azula reflected, is sometimes allowed to have pleasant dreams_.

* * *

**Chapter 4: The Monster Sleeps**

* * *

Sokka was a bit gobsmacked at how the décor changed over the course of about twelve steps. He glanced back, and beheld the high ceilings, the crimson reds, the shining gold of the Royal Palace at the recently renamed city of Grand Fire. He turned again, to the halls and areas reserved, away from public spectacle and access. Here, the colors were more muted, more drab, less imposing. Silk hangings with simple patterns in black and desaturated yellow hung from on high, dropping the ceiling by at least twice the height of a man. Done improperly, it would have made the place seem oppressive. But somehow, everything worked together to make this part of the Palace seem intimate, homely.

He could see Zuko's gloomy wife had something to do to occupy her time. Well, that and having to stab the assassins who flowed in and out with the opinion of Zuko's rulership. He let out a wide, admittedly boorish yawn, and made his way through the passages, away from the sounds of politics and machination, and towards the sounds of the working proletariat, toward the smells of cooking food. Toward old friends.

Child's laughter caught his attention as a three year old girl ran headlong into the side of Sokka's leg. She'd been running full tilt while staring at something behind her, and now found herself somewhat confounded, sitting on the floor. Sokka leaned down, offering a hand to the golden-eyed little girl.

"You really should watch where you're going," Sokka offered. The little girl, who a moment ago had looked like she was trying to decide whether to cry or not, broke forth with a toothy grin, her little hand grabbing the last three fingers of Sokka's and pulling herself up.

"Thank you, mister," she said.

"So, who are you, little girl?"

"I'm Kimiko!" she said, swaying on her little feet. "My stupid sister sez runnin's for boys. She's no fun."

"Where are your parents, little girl?" Sokka asked.

"Mama is with the funny lady," Kimiko said, grinning broadly. "Daddy's with the poop-heads."

"Does your mother know you're using that language?" Sokka said, following as she tugged him along.

"She'd make me was my mouth with soap," she said. She paused. "You won't tell Mama... please?"

Sokka couldn't help but smile. "It's our little secret."

The girl tugged him along, past the servants who just rolled their eyes with reserved chuckles at the little girl dragging along a Tribesman easily twice her height. It probably wasn't that unusual a sight. Sokka had an inkling who this child was, but he needed to know for sure. Finally, an exasperated boy of about eight or nine came skidding to a halt around a corner, his grey eyes wide and filled with snapping, childish fury.

"There you are! What were you doing running off like that?" the boy shouted, full of all the bluster his form could handle. "Don't you know it's not safe to..." At this point, the boy finally noticed Sokka, and his eyes went wider. "Kimi, who is that?"

"He's my new friend!" she said. "He's here to see Mama and Daddy."

"He could be an assassin!" the boy countered.

The girl laughed. "You said a dirty word!"

"Assassin isn't a dirty word!" the boy crossed his arms before his chest. Sokka couldn't help but laugh at the scene he'd walked into. When he had just about recovered from his doubled-over stance, both sets of eyes were on him.

"Oh, kids are hilarious," Sokka muttered. He finally let out the last braying laugh before composing himself. A bit, anyway. "Can you take her to her parents? I need to see the Fire Lord."

"You're here to see Daddy?" Kimiko asked brightly. At that, Sokka almost groaned inwardly for not noticing sooner. Of course. She was that second daughter he'd been told about. She took after her mother more than her father, except for the eyes. Those were all Zuko. Sokka threw a glance at the boy, and began to see the resemblance as well, but to Mai. He had the same narrow jaw and pale skin. It must have been galling for Tahm-Xin Loyo Lah to look the way he did; were he put in a dress, he'd make for a very attractive girl. Sokka put on a grin. It came easily.

"Of course I am. Could you bring me to her?"

"He could be an assassin!" Tahm-Tahm said again.

"Stop sayin' dirty words!" Kimiko countered, and with a stubborn look on her face, she continued to drag Sokka past. The Tribesman at least had the decency to put on a contrite face as he passed the young Azuli noble. Sokka was 'prisoner' of the Royal Family again. And the girls who beat him kept getting younger.

* * *

The first day, Ked barely got up at all. He was only awake for an hour, in which time he worked his magic water over Chan, repairing the extensive burns over his body, removing an infection, and leaving the firebender without so much as a mark to indicate that he'd been set on fire by that other Tribesman. But as soon as Ked was complete, he pitched over onto the ground, utterly insensate, and had to be carried bodily onto the boat.

He woke up the next day, with a bleary look in his eye, and took Chan aside, telling the firebender to fetch a large, torquing wrench. The two exchanged words, while Azula stood well clear of them. At first, Chan seemed reluctant to do something, but Ked was adamant, and eventually, Ked held his left hand against the wall of the wheelhouse, and Chan smashed the already damaged appendage twice, with all his strength, with that massive tool. The hand was pulverized, and Ked understandably let out an agonized wail.

Azula actually bolted to her feet when that happened, thinking there had been some sort of violent falling out between the two men, and wanting to be prepared if that violence spread. She would not be a victim of one madman's rampage. She pointedly ignored the fact that the reason she was here was as a victim of her own, six years ago. After Ked stopped screaming, he thanked the firebender, though. Thanked! And sat back, working that glowing water over the hand, muttering to himself in his own tongue. Azula was relieved, at least, that he didn't feel like complaining in any language she could understand. She had little patience for machismo, which that had to have been, and even less for people complaining about injuries sustained as a result of machismo.

After several more hours, Ked ceased in whatever it was he was doing, and walked back into the wheel house. He made it about a dozen steps, before pitching forward onto his face, utterly unconscious. Azula stepped over him as she walked in. But something pecked at her as she was about to turn a corner. Something insistent. Something long dormant, but pushing at her like something burrowing through her body and pressing out against her skin. With a groan of annoyance, she grabbed the Tribesman by the collar of his shirt and dragged him to his room, not far away, dumping him onto the bed and leaving him to his fugue.

That was yesterday. Today, the sun was high in the sky as the boat left the waves, and began to power into a cove, and Chan gathered everybody important, which to his mind consisted of her, himself, and the Tribesman, and put them on the skiff. They were actually heading up the river by the time Ked awoke, staring blearily at the world around him, muttering something in his uncivilized tongue. "So he finally awakens," Azula said, leaning back at the bow of the boat, staring at the other two men. Chan was keeping the thing running, and giving them direction. Ked was just being useless.

"What day is it?" Ked asked, clutching at his head like it was pounding. He stared around, then sniffed the air. He promptly turned a bit green, and leaned over the edge of the skiff to retch into the river. She could understand his reaction. The water here stank. A strange green substance floated atop it, something that she had no inclination whatsoever to touch. After Ked was finished, which was difficult to notice, since he hadn't eaten anything in two days, he flopped back into the bottom of the skiff like a clubbed fish.

"Yes," Chan answered a question nobody asked. "We're coming up on Jang Hui."

The boat rounded a bend, and Azula looked over her shoulder. Floating on pontoons in the middle of the flow – such as it was – was an entire sizable village. She raised an eyebrow at the sight. Odd that the proletariat would come up with that sort of solution. Another question needing answers was why they chose to live in the midst of the water instead of upon it. It would have certainly been easier.

Chan took his time docking the skiff on the floating wharf. By the time he had, Ked was looking a bit more alive. She stretched briefly, hoping her week of murderous rehabilitation was enough, and bounded out of the boat. She stumbled on the landing, but that she could traverse that distance again was refreshing. She hated being weak, useless, and worst of all, dependent. She stared down at Ked, who was extending a hand up toward her. She arched her brow. "And why would I do that?" she asked. Ked stared at his own hand for a moment, then muttered something in his tongue, before pulling himself awkwardly onto the creaking, unsteady wood.

"Could somebody remind me why we're in this backward piece of the Nation?" Azula asked.

Chan clambered up onto the wharf more easily than the Tribesman. "We're heading up river. Past the Jang Hui River, we reach the port of Hachiman, and from there, we island hop to Betla. Nobody comes here. It's the last place your brother would look for you."

"And so was that inn. And we were still found by a Tribesman of all things," Azula pointed out, crossing her arms. At least the idiot had the forethought to leave the clothes procured for her in the carriage instead of the inn, otherwise she would have been forced to wear a sweaty robe for three days. And that was not something she was going to do again. Azula leaned down toward Ked. "So now that you're awake, indulge me. Who was that maniac? From the way he was fighting, I'd say... Long lost brother?"

"I don't have a brother," Ked said. He slowly got to his feet, his pallor still closer to grey than his usual brown. "All I've got is my sister Benell. But him? That was Sokka Baihu. We grew up together. He was always a bit of a bully and a bit of an ass, but I never thought he'd actually try to _kill_ me."

Instantly, Azula's mind began to dissect that information, pulling it apart. Baihu was easy. They were a noble family from Di Huo. It clicked quickly that the only children in that family were Ty Lee and her sisters, and that drove a shard of pain into her chest. She betrayed Azula, and why? The next bit took a bit more mental muscle to call to the fore. Sokka. Surely, he couldn't mean that uncouth barbarian that traveled with the Avatar during the last years of her _father's_ reign? But she considered the alternative, that despite there being only a few tens of thousands of Tribesmen in the entire world, there would be two from the South Water Tribe named Sokka. Her life didn't give her that sort of leniency. Implications began to spiral out from the information. One landed with a note of disgust. So Sokka had married into nobility, in her Fire Nation? Oh, that wouldn't stand. And it explained why Ty Lee betrayed her. She'd fallen in love with a barbarian. Oh, that hurt even more. Betrayal upon betrayal. Of course Ty Lee did that. She never loved Azula. Nobody did. Nobody _could_. So Ked knew the face of his enemy. He knew his measure. So did she.

As that perceptual slowing of time slipped away, and the world sort of dropped back into place with a visceral lurch, she felt a smirk appear on her face, a condescending one, as she crossed her arms under her bosom. "I have to say I'm not impressed, waterbender. Couldn't even handle one man? One man who can't even bend?"

"I'm not a warrior," Ked said, an edge of anger in his voice. "And besides, Chan got beaten to within an inch of his life, too."

"If you can't even beat one non-bender, then what the hell kind of waterbender are you?" Azula asked, taking a few steps into the 'town' as she expected the question to hang in the air. Ked, though, obviously didn't get the signal that he was supposed to be defeated and shut up.

"The kind who has spent the last seven years becoming the most skilled and adept healer in the last two hundred years," Ked brazenly answered. "If you want a waterbender to fight, ask Sokka's sister. Since I couldn't water-whip or freeze or bodybend you out of your state, they decided that a doctor might be a bit more useful."

"You're not a doctor."

"Denying it doesn't make it untrue," Ked said. Azula was really starting to lose her temper. She didn't want to be talking to him. And he just didn't grasp that.

"You aren't a doctor, you're barely a waterbender, and you are thoroughly useless to me as a bodyguard," Azula said, forcing him to a stop with a hard glare of golden eyes. "And since I'm close enough to full strength, I think we shall no longer be needing you. When I leave this little backwards float of huts, you will be remaining behind."

"No," Ked said. Her eyes narrowed.

"What did you just say?"

"You're _not well_," Ked said pointedly. "I know it. You know it too, you just don't want to admit it to yourself. I'm not leaving."

"You dare defy me?" she demanded. Behind Ked, Azula could see Chan making terminating motions at the waterbender's back, but Ked couldn't see him, and would likely have ignored him if he could.

"Somebody has to. I'm not going to put the people I care about in danger because you're impatient."

"How dare you."

"Because I have to," Ked answered her rhetorical question again. It was a habit she thoroughly despised. And he rubbed her nose in it by walking into the village, effectively ensuring that barring an embarrassing outburst on her part, he would be getting the last word. Oh, how that grated. He walked away, leaving her with the firebender. A smirk came to her face. It could have been worse company. He might not be bright, but at least he was pretty.

"So, how will you be protecting me on this little nowhere hole in the earth?" Azula asked, trying to emulate the way Ty Lee would talk when she wanted boys to do something for her. When Chan got a look on his face like somebody just goosed him, she knew she hadn't done it quite right. She called forward the only lessons she'd ever gotten on this behavior, from the traitorous acrobat-turned-airbender, no less, and began to slink toward the muscular man, a smoky smile on her face. "Because surely I can't be left on my own in this harsh, backward village. Something could happen to me."

"I-I'm not sure about that," Chan said. When she tried doing that other thing, running her fingers along his shoulders as she walked around him, she could actually feel his skin crawling. Behind him, she stopped for a moment, her face dropping into an expressionless mask as she tried to figure out what she was doing wrong. She couldn't even do _this_ right, could she? No wonder everybody hated her. No. She wasn't going to give up. She would find some way to extend her control. She was losing her grasp on the Tribesman, if she ever had it to begin with, but she would not be left alone. Not again.

"Oh, I'm sure that a big, strong man like you could keep me safe," Azula continued, clasping her hands behind her back and even trying to _walk_ the way Ty Lee did. It was uncomfortable, between the relative weakness in her legs and the fact that the acrobat wasn't built like she was. She opened her eyes wide, staring up with a slight pout on her face, playing innocent for all she was worth. "You're not going to leave me all alone here, are you?"

"What? Of course not," Chan said, his wariness starting to melt away. Agni's blood, this was humiliating, but she was without allies and without support. She would garner it by any method in her power. "Look, we're not going to leave Jang Hui today. How about I see to getting us some dinner? It's the least I could do for the ruler of my Nation."

"Yes, it is," Azula said, but it came out as edged as she didn't want it to be. "I mean... It's the least you could do as a man..." once again, not exactly the proper thing to say. How in the endless oceans of Hell did Ty Lee make this look so damned easy? Chan raised an eyebrow at her, then finished knotting the skiff to the wharf, and walked past, muttering something under his breath. To his back, Azula felt rage boil up in her. She just couldn't do anything right at all.

"And doesn't that just kill you?" her own voice asked her. Her eyes glanced to the side, and she beheld that double, disheveled, smiling her brutal smile. "That the only way you can control people is to keep them off balance, keep them so afraid of you that they fear to act. How long do you think you can keep this up, Azula? How long before they all see how pathetic and worthless you really are? How long until they realize that you have nothing they need to be afraid of?"

"Shut up," Azula said through clenched teeth. Her double leaned close, her painted lips, smudged though they may be, hovering a whisker from Azula's ear.

"How long until they abandon you, like everybody else has?" her double whispered, taunted.

"I said shut up!" Azula hissed.

"How long until Crazy Little Azula is all alone again?" Azula felt her head pulled back as her double grabbed her long black locks and heaved. Her double stared down contemptuously at her, cruelty naked in her golden, bloodshot eyes. "How long until you _completely_ lose control?"

Azula slammed her face forward, feeling as though she'd just had all of her hair torn out by the roots. And with a scream that started in her toenails, she roared into the stinking air "_**LEAVE ME ALONE!**_" As she shrieked, she lashed out with a bolt of azure fire which arched and twisted, flying with almost no control through the air, almost smashing into and destroying a shack overlooking the water, before bending away and barreling directly into that water. Azula stared at what she had wrought. The water burned. It was quickly expanding, too. With a quick twist of her wrists, a desperate act of bending, she pulled the fire off of the water, and into the air, where it quickly snuffed.

Others came running, but Azula was already moving away into the forest of shacks, her eyes down, her shoulders slumped. Shameful. That doppelganger was right. She was losing control. And in the end, she would be all alone.

Because Azula was a monster. And monsters died alone.

* * *

Chan looked dubiously at the offerings this Xu had for sale. There were oysters... of a sort. They had bizarre, unhealthy looking lumps on their shells, and something thick, brown, and stinking oozed out of their openings. The fish were little better. The normal looking ones were anemic, of sickly coloration and bearing irregular, often displacing scales. Chan was not a fisherman, but he knew enough about fish not to want to eat this one. And these ones were the 'best of the house'. The alternatives were larger, granted, but only because they had two heads.

"I'm not sure these are fit for human consumption," Chan said distastefully. Xu rubbed his head, and a tuft of his white, stringy hair fell off when he did.

"Funny you should say that. I've been eating these things for years, and I'm healthy as a horse!"

"When I see a 'horse', I'll take you up on that," Chan said warily. He shook his head. There was no way he was putting this in his mouth. "Are there any other shops in this Agni-forsaken little town?"

"Sure! I'll get my brother to show you around!" Xu said quite enthusiastically. He ducked behind the counter, and when he popped back up, he was wearing a different hat. "Hey there, stranger! My brother says you need somebody to guide you around the village!"

"I was just talking to you," Chan said, taking a step backward.

"No, you must have been talking to my brother, Xu. People mistake me for him all the time. I'm Dock!" the man said enthusiastically.

"But I just saw you..." Chan gesticulated furiously. "The only thing you changed was your hat!"

"I didn't change my hat. I always wear this hat!" 'Dock' said peevishly. "Now do you need a guide around Jang Hui or not?"

"Yes! But from your brother!"

"Xu doesn't do tours," 'Dock' pointed out. "That's my job. That, and helping people across the river. That's why they call me Dock. Since he minds the store, they call him Xu."

Chan sputtered. "But... you're Xu."

"No, I'm Dock. Xu tends the store."

"You were tending the store a minute ago! Until you changed your hat!"

'Dock' got a suspicious look on his face. "You haven't been drinking the water, have you? I hear it can make you a bit crazy," he said.

Chan could _feel_ a fuse blowing out in his mind.

* * *

Nobody had seen her. That was a blessing, after her outburst, not to have to deal with the embarrassment and humiliation of all of those peasants staring at her. Knowing that she wasn't _right_. That there was something wrong with... she cut off the line of thought. It wasn't heading anywhere useful.

Azula's eyes initially glossed over the crowds of people laying about lethargically in the autumn heat. But their number soon became something she was not able to simply overlook. In fact, it seemed three out of every four adults were, if not simply lying about, engaged in pointless and needless busywork. Even the children seemed lethargic, entirely too sedentary to be children of the Fire Nation. East Continent children tended to be sedate, because the stone was in their very blood. In the West, they were children of fire, and fire, if nothing else, was active. So something about this didn't seem right.

She walked the wooden walkways with something like her usual stride. As she did, she noticed one group of children not staring blankly into the distance, or clinging to a torpid parent. They were gathered around a dark skinned man with a torn, dirty shirt and dark blue eyes. Of course, Ked was attaching himself to them as soon as he landed. He hadn't even taken the time to get himself new clothing, which he was in desperate need of. Instead, he worked his magic water, handed out the food he'd carefully packed away for she, Chan and Ked to eat on their journey, and generally made Azula's blood pressure rise a bit. She considered giving him a piece of her mind, but then discarded the notion. It wasn't worth the effort, nor the time. He turned to give her a glance, knowing exactly where to look to see her, which was odd; she was standing well off the usual path, and his back was to her. He nodded, and she scowled. If he wanted to give away food, it would be _his_ food. See how morally superior he was when he was starving.

"You don't really think that."

Azula spun, golden eyes flashing. With anger or fear, she couldn't say. She knew that voice. Mother. A glance around, and nobody anywhere approaching Ursa's description could be found. Just a trick of the ear. That's what she told herself. And maybe if she told herself that enough times, she'd start to believe it.

Azula finally reached the best of the shacks, and found it playing host to soldiers. Soldiers wearing electric blue on their armor, and a similar standard flying at the back end of the hall. A few of them raised eyebrows at her as she passed. She caught one of them staring intently at her bosom. That annoyed her. She snapped her fingers, a dark expression on her face. "You will look me in the eye, or you will lose yours," Azula said. The soldier shrugged.

"I'm perfectly content as I am," he answered, picking at his teeth with a fingernail. And continuing to stare at her breasts. Her hands clawed down, and she felt that fire licking at her soul, demanding violence. It was stymied when a beefy fist smashed across his jaw, sending him to the floorboards. Chan, scowling almost as darkly as Azula, dusted off his hands, staring at the soldier, then turned to the others.

"Any questions?" the others pointedly turned away, doing other soldiery things. "I thought not. Madam, if you will come with me?"

"I could have handled myself," Azula snapped, as she crossed the threshold. An array of somewhat edible dishes were laid out. At first, she thought it was the firebender's cooking, but upon closer inspection, she noted that it was somebody making the best possible dish out of terrible food. Hopefully, it was palatable. She was not one noted for holding hope.

"Yes, but it's my job to protect you. I am the big, strong man, aren't I? I can't be upstaged by the..." Chan began, and trailed off when her flat glare began to drill through his skull. "Anyway. I had one of the women whip up some food. I thought the barbarian was with you, though."

"He's 'making nice' with the locals," Azula said disdainfully, sitting at one end of the short, rough table, and crossing her arms. "I don't see the point. We're going to be leaving this squalid swamp in a few hours anyway."

"No, we're not," Chan said, beginning to offer up a benediction. While Azula never did herself, it was an artifact of a secular upbringing. That he was still 'spiritual' put a twist to her lips. And even more so that he didn't answer the question she obviously asked silently. It galled her, such that she eventually had to break him of his prayer.

"And why not?" Azula demanded.

"Why aren't you saying the benediction?" Chan asked.

"Faith is a pointless waste of time better spent actually doing something to change your state of affairs. Besides, my questions take precedence to yours, footsoldier," Azula snapped. Chan leaned back, a bit surprised at her tone.

"Why aren't we leaving?" he asked. She nodded very tersely. "There's a storm coming. It'll be here in about half a day, and we'll have nowhere to camp on the river. I'd rather stay in a place which has a roof than a skiff on the water or huddled under a tree."

"And how can you possibly know this?"

"I grew up in these islands, woman, I know them better than most people know their own face," Chan said cockily, digging into his food. Azula stared at him.

"'Woman'?"

"That... didn't come out right," Chan said, not meeting her gaze.

"No," she said coldly. "It did not."

She began to eat again, making a note to ignore his prattle. Yes, he was an attractive specimen of an Embiar man, but she sensed a greater disparity in intellect between herself and he, as there was between he and the fish they were eating. And there was the way he talked to her. Like he expected her to fawn over him as a conquering hero. Like he expected to have to dote on her. Like she was weak.

She was not weak. She would never be weak. And she would never make herself weaker than she was. That was why she denied her mother, why she emulated _father_. _Father_ wanted her strong. _Father_ wanted her to be Fire Lord! He didn't want her to debase herself, earning a living as a noble woman on her back, utilizing nothing but her uterus to earn her place in the procession of history. No, he demanded she earn her place in history through the strength of her arms and the force of her will.

"And that's why you can't make yourself hate him," Ursa's voice came to Azula's ear again. She turned, glaring at the kitchen. The woman working in the kitchen was stooped and weathered. She had been in the sun so often for the many years of her life that her skin had taken up the color and the texture of leather. She was also short, pudgy, and her eyes were dark brown. No, that voice was not hers. She quickly schooled her face, before somebody noticed.

Since the only person in the room was Chan, nobody did. "I have to say," Azula cut into Chan's pointless story smoothly as a knife. "When I saw the fare, I had thought you might have cooked it for me yourself. That would have been a... nice gesture."

"Cook? Please. That's a woman's job," Chan dismissed. "The only time it isn't is when he's getting paid to do it."

"Really," Azula said flatly. It was not a question.

"Reallll..." Chan realized too late that he had said something very stupid. Namely, implicitly claiming that a woman's place was in the kitchen. "I mean – No, that's just..."

"I think I am full," Azula said. At least, she had lost her appetite. "If that will be all, I'll be retiring. Make sure nobody disturbs me."

"And if..."

"Nobody," Azula repeated. She got out of that building which seemed to double as a barracks for the small garrison, and walked to a building well off the main square which Chan had mentioned in his ramble that he'd procured for her to sleep in. Even when she wasn't listening, she was still capable of paying attention. She crossed the many bridges over the stinking water, and over one of them, paused briefly, staring down. Green, thick scum was floating atop it, cut apart into plates as it flowed past the piles driven into the heart of the river. This wasn't normal. She didn't know much about water, but what she did know is that it wasn't supposed to be able to catch fire.

She continued walking, and scowled as she saw Ked, waterbending for the amusement of the children. She stood behind him, crossing her arms and tapping her foot unhappily. When he finally turned to her, she raised a brow. "Is it wise to do that in plain sight?"

"Do what? Waterbend?"

"You may not have noticed, but there are very few waterbenders in this part of the world," Azula said.

"Yeah, and that's an obvious problem," Ked said. He waved a hand toward the children who were drinking thirstily of the water Ked had been playing around with. "Look at them. Even surrounded by water, they're all dehydrated. This is probably the purest water they've been able to drink in years."

"So what you were doing with..." Azula began, but Ked picked up a bucket full of something clear and pulled a burning splinter away from a torch, dipping it in. The fluid caught the flame easily, and burned with a blue-green color. She waited for him to explain.

"_There is a harmful substance in the water_," Ked said, speaking in Tianxia, which might have been considered a universal tongue, but it was doubtful the rubes in the Fire Nation would be able to speak it. "_It's toxic, probably mutagenic, and dangerous to plant and animal life. I asked to see the really young children, but the youngest child in Jang Hui is seven years old. After that, none of them make it past a few weeks of pregnancy_."

"_What are you implying?_"

"_Something is killing these people, driving them mad, and making them infertile,_" Ked said. "_I'm surprised there are any children left alive at all_."

"_And let me guess,_" Azula said. "_You're going to stay here until everything is fixed and every person is healthy and strong again?_" Ked was about to say something but she continued over him. "_Well the world doesn't work like that. You can't help everybody. Trying just leads to failure. And we don't have time for this little misadventure. As soon as the storm Chan predicts coming has passed, we're moving up the river. Is that clear?_"

Ked stared at her for a long moment. "_Just because you can't save everybody, doesn't mean you shouldn't try. Sometimes, just saving __somebody__ is enough._"

Azula shook her head. "You are an idealistic fool."

"Gladly, and happily," Ked answered, a smile pulling at his face. She glanced up at the sun, but she felt fatigue where she should have felt power.

"I'm going to sleep," she muttered, walking away. She flopped onto the mattress, not even changing into her sleeping clothes, and stared at the roof in the heat. The lethargy of this place was infecting her, too. Or so it seemed. As it was, it was still a while before she finally felt her eyes drift shut, and the dreams start to assault her.

* * *

In Sokka's experience, which was admittedly spotty, Zuko had an odd schedule for practicing his firebending. As far as he could tell, the most common practice was to train at high noon, when a firebender was at his strongest. Zuko, on the other hand, practiced either in the evenings, or failing that, in the dead of night. He could see the logic in it, though; if you were used to doing everything when it was at its very most difficult, then there would be few unpleasant surprises left if he ever had to do it in a crisis. That the Fire Lord _trained_ at night was much the same as Sokka always _sleeping through_ the night.

Of course, Sokka didn't have the luxury of other people knowing about him. He had a reputation to uphold.

Kimiko managed to drag the Tribesman around most of the restricted areas of the palace, her enthusiasm easily swaying the guards to let the girl past with the hulking Tribesman in tow. Likely she had done the exact same with others in her scant three years. It wasn't until almost two hours of random wandering later that she finally found Zuko, her father, in the Fire Court. He was not alone, though. His wife, Fire Lady Mai was off to one side, her eldest daughter quietly playing with a pair of dolls on the bench beside her. Knowing Yuuki, she would have been in her mother's lap, were there any lap left. As it was, Mai's belly took up that space. Yuuki was as sedate and quiet as Kimiko was loud. And leaning against the both of them, shooting Sokka a territorial glare, was Zuko's dragon, Chong Sheng. It hadn't grown too much since last time Sokka saw him, but it was still quite large. Easily large enough to ride on. If he had the stomach for it.

Mai gave Sokka a bare glance, bright grey eyes flicking over him, before giving him a slight nod, then tipping her head to the court. Sokka followed her gesture, and found Zuko, stripped to the waist, talking to his sister, both moving the same way, as though he were mimicking her waterbending forms. Sokka's eyes rolled at the sight. It was bad enough that the most popular rumor in the world was that the Avatar's wife was secretly the Fire Lord's lover, but it almost seemed like these people were encouraging this perception. As it was, Sokka's marriage, despite their frequent absences from each other, was probably the most stable of anybody he knew. Well, barring Ogan and Sedna, but those two were just _ridiculous_.

Katara's face lit up with a smile and she took off at a run toward her brother. She gave him a tackling hug, somewhat similar to those his wife tended to employ, and gave him a hard squeeze. "Sokka!" she cried. "Tui La, it's been years. How are you?"

"I've been better. How are you and Aang?"

"Frequently separated," Katara said, extracting herself and getting a dark look on her face. "I mean, I _understand_ that he has duties in the East Continent, but..."

"I get it," Sokka said, looping an arm over her shoulder and walking toward the Fire Lord. "It hasn't been easy for me, either. Ty Lee's the second-best airbender in the world. A lot of people are clamoring for her to teach them. She hasn't been home much, either."

Zuko, hearing Sokka's name shouted, ceased in his practices and waited for him to approach. When he did, he gave the Tribesman a nod. "I think I know how this is going to go," Zuko muttered darkly.

"Not even a little," Sokka said. "We should speak in private."

"Why?" Zuko asked. "Anything you say in front of me you can say in front of my wife."

"Or are you just trying to cut me out of the loop?" Katara asked, shrugging off his arm from 'round her shoulders. Sokka looked between his sister and his old friend, and sighed.

"I found them," Sokka said. Zuko's one remaining eyebrow rose, but Sokka shook his head. "But they got away. There was unexpected resistance."

"I thought it was just the waterbender," Zuko said.

"What waterbender?" Katara asked.

"Ked," both men said at once. She glanced between them, confused.

"I grew up with him," her expression grew dark. "What did he do?"

"He admitted to stealing Azula from the hospital in Grand Ember," Sokka said. "But there's something else going on here. He's not acting alone. He had a firebender with him."

"Who?"

"I can't be sure, but I think it's the first guy I beat in an Agni Kai," Sokka stroked his short beard for a moment. "And there was another. He was a Yu-Yan Archer," Sokka instantly broke into a grin, pulling something from its case. "And he had my old boomerang! See! I told you it'd come back!"

"Wait, didn't you lose that...?" Zuko asked, and Sokka nodded, the grin curdling.

"At the battle of Wu Long Forest," he confirmed. "It's like I thought. Too many people are involved in this. People who shouldn't be. Somebody else is directing this. Ked has the answers, though. I know he does."

"If he hurt my sister..." Zuko began, but Sokka forestalled him.

"She's awake."

"WHAT!" both firebender and grandmaster waterbender screamed at once.

"Azula fought me at Hama's Inn. I burned the place down trying to surprise them," Sokka frowned. "She wasn't as dangerous as I remember, but I know when that woman's trying to kill me. This is much bigger than we thought, buddy. You might be right. This might not have been a kidnapping. It's an escape."

Zuko stared for a moment, then lashed out with a cry of anger, or frustration, or something between or overlapping the two; the fires pulsed a fearsome electric blue for just an instant across the empty Fire Court, before fading back to red and dissipating. A section of the stone floor glowed slightly in its partially molten state.

"This just never... fucking... ends... does it?" Zuko growled. Mai was standing, a hard stare directed at her husband. Zuko looked back and gave a brief nod. Yuuki and Kimiko were huddling close to Mai and enthusiastically demanding Zuko make the fire blue again, respectively. Zuko ignored his younger daughter's pleas and turned to Sokka. "We have to do something about this."

"I couldn't agree more," Katara said.

"Take a hundred of my best men. A thousand! Hunt them all down!" Zuko said. He paused, getting his breathing under control. When he spoke again, the edge had left his voice, returning it to that soft lilt which seemed so out of place on the most powerful ruler left on this Earth. "There's just no getting around it is there? My sister's never coming back. I've lost her."

"Not everybody gets a perfect family," Sokka said, clapping a hand onto Zuko's bare shoulder. "Some of us have to make due with what we get."

Zuko looked between Sokka and Katara with a note of envy, but it dissolved when he turned back toward his own wife, then stooped and threw a robe onto his frame. "Sometimes, when I just wake up, I can almost remember how she used to be," Zuko said. "She wasn't always like this."

"She's a threat," Katara said simply. "Even if she isn't evil, she's as close as it comes, and she's loose in the world again. Can you imagine how much damage she could cause with nothing but her mind and her name?"

"More than you could ever know."

"So we're leaving?" Katara asked Sokka.

"No," Sokka said. She seemed to lose track of herself for a moment. "You aren't going to come with me. This is something I need to do on my own."

"Are you _insane_? You're outnumbered. You're going against three benders, one of them the most powerful one on the planet, and the last time I checked, sarcasm and a boomerang don't stack up well against that sort of firepower," Katara said, fists on her hips, like when they were kids. Sokka felt a smile pull at his face.

"Hasn't anybody told you?" Sokka asked with a wink. "I _am_ a bender. I bend the element of surprise."

"Unbelievable," Katara muttered, almost perfectly matching their father in intonation.

"I don't feel right about doing this," Zuko said.

"And you're going to like this even less," Sokka said. "Don't tell Aang about this. Or Ty Lee."

"Why not?"

"I love my wife, and I respect the Avatar, but they have a simplistic view of the world," Sokka said. Mai couldn't help but nod at that assessment. "They wouldn't understand what we're doing. The only thing that would hurt them more than Azula rampaging through Ember would be what would happen if one of the airbenders learns about what we did to stop her."

"I don't know if I can keep a secret from my husband," Katara said cautiously.

"We all keep secrets to protect the ones we care about," Sokka said. His were more humiliating than some. A lifetime being a symbol to the majority of the world which could not bend, so easily undermined. Nobody knew. He intended to keep it that way. Just before Sokka exited the room, he noticed something very out of place in the very hallowed and ancient-seeming Fire Court. It was a tower of sorts, although only twice the height of a man, ending with a hammered disc at the top. A dull humming sounded from it. Sokka got a grin on his face.

"I see my sister-in-law sent you the Baihu Coil," Sokka pointed out.

Zuko nodded. "Yeah. It's been a real help," he said distractedly. Of course it was. Now, he wouldn't need to wait for a storm or for an assassination attempt by Azula or Jeong Jeong to work on his lightning redirection.

"You know, I practically invented this thing," Sokka said, giving the Fire Lord a light elbow in the ribs.

"Is that so?"

"Yup. A tower. That shoots lightning bolts," Sokka said, looking up at it. "Zhu Di might have come up with the science, but I made it... spectacular."

"Yeah, that's great, buddy," Zuko said. He stopped, turning to him. "I assume you're going to be leaving soon?"

"Soon enough," Sokka confirmed, bringing a hang-dog look from his sister.

Zuko sighed. "Sooner or later, we'll get a quiet week, where we can sit, have a meal, and reminisce about the days when we were young, free, and immortal."

"That'll be the day," Sokka said. The others left, Chong Sheng shooting Sokka one last dirty look before clambering up over the walls and taking to the sky. It was much the same look it gave Katara, the first few times she showed up here since the Comet. Mai had given the beast a stern talking to, and since then, it was much more accommodating for her. Sokka glanced about, and saw that nobody was watching him. He walked over to the button that activated the tower, and gave it a kick. The device hummed to life for about a second, before there was a harsh snap.

Sokka dropped low, and took up the stance that he'd practiced to perfection, before he ever shipped this thing here. The artificial lightning arced toward him, but then began to shift. Instead of striking him, and knocking him on his ass as it used to, it flowed before him, shifting along his stance as he directed it into one of the pillars around the Fire Court. The artificial lightning slammed into that pillar, leaving a small scorch mark, and the tower returned to a low hum. Sokka smirked. He might not be much of a waterbender, but he was a Tribesman, and that meant he was good at cheating. Tribesmen had something of a bad reputation. It wasn't wholly undeserved.

Sokka left the Fire Court and made his way, after getting lost twice and finally breaking down and asking for directions, to the room he had been promised. He let out a low whistle as he stepped into the outermost room, which had windows looking out into a courtyard. He could fit his entire childhood home from the South Pole in here. And there were other rooms branching off of this one. Sokka took off his coat and threw it onto a chair, and leaned out the window, staring down a long boulevard which clambered off to the north. Somewhere that way was Ashfall prison, and the cell of Ozai, the man with the gall to call himself Phoenix King before he even conquered the world.

He hadn't thought he would ever think it, but Grand Fire was actually a pretty city. Its streets were clustered with clean, pleasant buildings, but not locked into the rigid and repetitive pattern of the Upper Ring of Ba Sing Se. That looked like a show-piece, a display. This looked like people lived here. Rich people, but people. There was a grunting sound which dragged Sokka out of his ponderings, and he looked upward just in time for white fur to descend, and an enormous tongue to lick him, knocking him back onto his rump in his room.

"Eaaugh," Sokka wiped the drool from his face, and moved back to the window, this time more carefully. "So which one are you?"

The sky bison was gargantuan. He had learned, over the last few years, that Appa was not nearly the specimen that he had believed. Appa was only half-grown when Sokka and Katara found the Avatar in an iceberg. And more tellingly, Appa was somehow a she. Basu, on the other hand, though young, was male. And from the look of the massive head, with the heavy horns creeping out of it, and the bright silver arrow pointing down toward its nose, this looked not the Avatar's animal, but another airbender's. One he knew very well. Basu let out a long groaning sound, which was its usual answer to any query.

"Ooooh So-o-o-o-okka," A voice drifted from one of the rooms nearby. He instantly perked to attention, hearing it. A smile growing on his face, he threw open the door... to be assaulted by a blizzard of flying fabric. In the matter of a few moments, Sokka, having been wrapped practically head to foot in ribbons, tipped over and landed on his side in the room. Ty Lee was grinning down at him. "You kept me waaaaiting," she said with her usual grin.

Sokka, as he usually did, thanked the universe for giving him the woman he had. She was an astounding specimen, almost comically buxom, and possessed of a narrow, muscular stomach. The latter, she always kept exposed, no matter the weather or circumstance. Even her dress – for a wedding held at the _South Pole_ – had an exposed midriff. Blue tattoos ran up her back, down her arms and legs, ending at arrows on her hands and feet; it was not a complete set of Air Nomad tattoos, but she had been adamant that she was _not_ going to shave her head, not even for the mark of her airbending mastery. Before, her favorite colors tended to be on the pink spectrum, but now, she had moved on to bright yellows. "I didn't think I'd see you here," Sokka said, for the moment ignoring the fact that his wife had somehow trussed him in ribbons in a matter of seconds. "Didn't you get my message?"

"You sent a message?" Ty Lee asked, looking a bit confused.

"That I would be delayed? I had business on Grand Ember?" he prompted, almost gesticulating, but finding himself unable to. She pulled him up by his ribbons, sitting astride his trapped lap.

"Obviously it wasn't that serious," Ty Lee said.

"...Can I ask why you tied me up, now?" Sokka asked. If he didn't know any better, he'd say she was trying to recreate the old days, when she was still working with Azula. Say what you would about Ty Lee, she was a very compassionate soul. Which was exactly why Sokka had to keep her in the dark about Azula for as long as possible.

She walked fingers up his neck, "I missed my birthday," she said. She cast out a hand, and a gust of wind slammed the door shut. A second threw the windows open, pouring light into the room. "And now, I get to unwrap my present."

"Have I told you I love you lately?" Sokka said with a grin, which almost matched his mate's perfectly.

"I prefer when you scream it," she said, a look of naked lust in her dark brown eyes.

Finding Ked and Azula... that would have to wait.

* * *

The wind had picked up as night fell on Jang Hui. Ked watched as the children stood next to the windows, pulling in leaky baskets of water, dumping it into pots. The only safe water to drink was the rain. They floated on poison. He had showed what parents weren't falling to the mind-destroying effects of the water how to purify it, how boiling the water in a makeshift alembic, and burning the gas resulting, would give much safer, if strange tasting, water to drink. Of course, much of what he told them probably flew right over their heads, until he actually spent the rest of the afternoon building the damned thing himself. It wasn't much, and left him with more splinters and abrasions on his hands than he'd gotten at any point in the last decade.

But he was helping. That was what mattered.

When Ked finally finished, he sought out Chan, to see if he would be willing to help fabricate more. Not only was he not, he was also violently opposed to the idea. Whatever put him into a bad mood threatened to do Ked harm, so he quickly made an exit. When he finally did find where Azula would be sleeping, she was already curled up on the cot, pulling tight on herself like she was trying to protect herself from a beating. Ked felt his heart lurch, watching as even in her sleep, she shivered, muttered fearfully. Wept. Ked moved to her side, sitting on one unoccupied section of the cot, and pulled the water from his flask into a pair of gloves.

He just watched her for a little while. For four years, he had been observing her. When she was 'awake', she would be almost totally non-responsive. Minimal response to any sound whatsoever. Only slightly more response to light, as she had a tendency to stare at flames nearby. Only when she was 'asleep', did she show signs that there was still a mind inside. She would flinch and twitch in her dreams, undoubtedly nightmares. She would silently cry. What had put that sort of fear into this woman? She was allegedly the most powerful bender on the planet, after the Avatar. She was the daughter of the most terrifying Fire Lord ever to live. So what could have happened? He glanced down at his hands, and saw that they did not glow. No, in his creeping wrath, the water became so dark that it drained what little light there was from the room, visible only because it was blacker than anything around it, even the darkness. Where his sleeves touched that blackness, they dissolved into dust. In shock, Ked let go of the water completely. It became transparent as it fell from his hands. He had to keep control. If he didn't... Well, he'd better not lose control.

Ked gathered up his water again, and carefully set the water alight, and ever-so-gently, laid his palm to her temple, letting his fingers wrap forward onto her brow. As ever before, her mind was a whorl of chaotic energy. Waterbending might be able to mend the flesh, but it woefully inadequate for healing injuries of the mind. So much so, that it sometimes felt he couldn't do anything at all. So all he could do was help smooth out that chaos, and maybe give her some peace.

As he did this, he did what he often did, when he walked in on Azula having nightmares. He began to sing. Quietly. Softly. A song he had penned. How she'd watched her world burn.

* * *

The room was large, darker than she could remember it. A glance around confirmed that it was, in fact, her old room. Before she set it on fire. She heard that splashing again. Somebody trying to act silently, but failing to haste. She got up, igniting a blaze of red fire in her palm. She glanced at it. Again, not blue. And again, the dream logic silenced her. Of course it wasn't blue. She was a child. Children didn't bend blue flame. She took a step away from the bed, but a cold hand grabbed hers.

She looked back, and golden eyes stared out from a cadaverous head, hair black and dull. "You promised you'd protect me," a boy's voice issued from that corpse-like face.

"You didn't protect any of us," Another boy, this one older, in his teens. Darker skinned. Embiar. A smoking hole through his chest. Mother, wearing funerary whites, shook her head slowly. Unhappily. With disappointment.

"She is a monster."

Azula turned, lashing out with fire and a scream, and they burned away like paper. "I can't protect anybody!" she cried out, her voice a child's. "I'm not good enough!"

The splashing continued, as behind her, her bed burned. She pulled that green, sickly fire into her hand, and walked toward the sound. Sloshing, and a sound of a wet towel being thrown aside. If memories had dreams, they would feel as she did right now. Wait, dream-thought. Backwards. She tried to set it right in her mind, but like a memory of a dream, it faded, and vanished from her cognition. She knew it should stymie her, enrage her that she didn't have that control of her own mind that she prided herself for. But here, it was smoke in the wind.

The light finally pressed away the darkness from the corner of that over-large room, and she beheld Ursa, turning, her arms covered in long scratches, her clothes torn and shredded. And burnt. "Mama? What happened?" she asked. Ursa's eyes lit, and –

There was brutal pain in Azula's head, a fuzziness which suffused her senses despite it. She raised her hand to her face, and it came away bloody. Ursa stared hatefully at her. "I know what you did, child," she said. But her voice sounded wrong. "I saw it with my own eyes. So don't you dare try to lie to me. I saw what you did to that young boy," She shook her head slowly, a sneer painted on her face. "I had such high hopes for you. But you're weak. Just like I always suspected."

"But Mama, I wanted to help..." she begged, her voice now more familiar, the tones she'd used in her quest after the Avatar... but what did that mean? When did Azula help anybody?

Azula was answered by a kick in the face. As the stars flit through her vision, she received several more to her chest. "Mama! Please! I didn't mean..." she begged.

...

Then, there was song. Azula leaned back, as that pain became a memory in a dream, locked away. She looked around her. Three windows, one in each wall, and she was standing in a featureless room at their heart. The right window was utterly opaque, black as death, and sound passing through it was muffled. She turned to the center window, leaning closer. She saw her room again, and her, standing in bare feet, as she found her mother, washing in the basin. Then, with a cry, her mother ran forward, dropping to her knees and embracing that younger Azula, weeping openly and begging for forgiveness. An endless litany of 'I'm sorry, I'm so sorry' coming from her lips. Azula was confused. What had Mother done?

Bored with that dream, she turned to the left window, as the song continued to thread its way into her. It was familiar, that song. How, she could not say. But it seemed to be embedded in her, now. She looked through that window. She was a young child, and she was sitting beside her brother. She must have been five, because Zuzu was still bedridden. The physicians stepped away from them, and took Mother aside, telling her something which made her choke back a sob. Azula, this young Azula, couldn't hear it. She just sat beside her brother.

"It's not good, is it?" Zuko asked quietly, his voice failing him.

"You're going to be alright," Azula said, taking his hand into both of hers.

"No. I'm not. But it's alright," Zuko said, looking positively ghoulish for his illness. A tear leaked sideways out of his eye. "I know that... I'm so tired. I just want to sleep."

"No," Azula said, tears in her eyes, as she pressed his hand between her own. "You can't go. I don't want you to go."

"It's alright, 'zula," Zuko said, then his eyes drifted closed one last time. She started to weep, confusing the Azula watching. Zuko didn't die. He was very much alive. As if to answer her confusion, there was a flash of light, almost unbearably bright, starting in the five-year-old Azula's hands and creeping up Zuko's arms and into his body. His chest, once still, began to rise and fall again. His pallor went from corpse-like to merely pale. The girl Azula sat there, for a long time. Azula didn't even notice as the window dissolved, and she became that girl.

Mama walked over, already dressed in white, prepared for her firstborn son's death even before it came. But Azula didn't know that, not yet. All she knew is that her brother's hand was still warm. Still pulsed with life. "It's time to go, Azula," Mama said. "He's in a better place now."

"I'm thirsty," Zuko's voice was like a whisper, but when Ursa heard it, she froze stock still.

"I'm tired, Mama," Azula said. Ursa called for the physician, but Azula didn't see, and thus didn't know what they'd done. But at the end of it, Ursa was hugging the two of them together, weeping openly, but with a smile on her face. As that child Azula was drifting out of consciousness, she turned to her brother. And the song drifted away.

"It'll be okay," Azula whispered. "I'll protect you, Zuzu."

Azula's eyes slid open, and she felt disorientation. Something wasn't right. Not only were her dreams bizarre, that song and everything else, but she felt something out of place. When she looked down, she saw that she was clutching a brown hand, holding it close to herself. Her hands sprung open, casting the limb away in confusion. As her mind finally cleared, she could see that Ked had fallen asleep on the floor next to her bed. Like a hound, she considered. He slowly woke up, looking around.

The weather outside was terrible, but in shelter, it was actually delightfully cozy, despite its lack of fine accoutrement. Azula saw that Chan was also sleeping, in the cot on the opposite side of the shack. Of course. He'd denied Ked a bed. But why was she clutching his... Right. She denied the notion as it presented. She had not been holding his hand. That would have been absurd.

"You're awake," Ked said. The rain fell in bucketfuls outside the shack, painting the air grey. He shook himself, trying to get some blood flowing. "Are you alright? You looked like you were having a nightmare."

"I don't remember my dreams," Azula lied. "And if I did, they wouldn't matter anyway. Just flights of fancy of an unoccupied mind."

"I don't know," Ked said quietly. "Sometimes, they're bits of ourselves and our memories that can't find a voice when we're awake," he stretched, then moved a respectful distance from her, and sat down against a wall. "Lady Azula, there's something I'd like to know."

"And what makes you think you deserve an answer?" she asked.

Ked shrugged. "Seniority?" he attempted. "I have been spending the last four years keeping you from dropping dead from your illness."

Azula stared at him. He thought he was telling the truth. Thought. She decided to humor him. "What is it, Tribesman?"

"Where did you get the scars on your back?" Ked asked. Instantly, she felt a chill run through her. Black window.

"Battle," she said. "I didn't lead some coddled life, walled away in the palace while the world went on around me, ignored. I was striding the field from my fifteenth birthday. I fought my enemies across the length and breadth of the world. Of course, a few of them are going to leave a mark."

"Those aren't from combat," Ked said. "I've seen battlefield wounds. Burns, lacerations, broken bones. There are patterns they form. Those," Ked pointed at her, indicating her back, "aren't from combat. Besides, we both know the only way somebody hurts your back is if you show it to them. Since you're neither a coward nor in the slightest bit trusting, I doubt somebody could easily get one cut on your back. There are hundreds."

Azula's eyes narrowed. "When did you observe my naked body?"

"I'm a doctor. Your doctor, in point of fact," Ked stressed. "It's my job to know my patients."

"You..." Azula felt that fire licking at her soul again. He had seen her body, without her permission. That was almost akin to rape! Even as that thought ran through her, the fury instantly died, and a block of ice seemed to appear in her stomach, quenching rage under a spike of undeniable if incoherent fear. "You had no right," she said, a bit fainter than she would have wanted.

"Nobody knows where they came from," Ked said, making a placating gesture. "I just wanted to hear directly from the source."

"Maybe when you've earned it, _doctor_," she said distantly, barely even giving the poisoned inflection she'd intended. Ked nodded at that, not as she intended at all.

"Maybe," he agreed. He sat back, scratching at his arms. Seeing it made her want to do likewise, but she kept her hands still.

"And?" she asked flatly. She knew something else was on his mind.

"I've done some talking with the locals," he said, keeping his eyes closed. "The illnesses and stillbirths started around here when the refinery opened up the river."

"So? We need refined metal. That doesn't happen by magic."

"I don't think it's a refinery," Ked said. "There's no reason to put on here. There's no iron in this island, and it's cheaper to import it from Grand Ember or Di Huo. Why is that facility even there?"

Azula stretched, working out the ache she got from sleeping in such a strange way, and stood. "How long did that one say this storm was going to last?" she asked.

"Off and on for the next day," Ked answered. "Why?"

"Get dressed. We're taking a trip up river," she said. If there was something she was not going to tolerate, it was waste. And if that meant giving some people a stern talking-to... well, it could have been worse.

It didn't occur to her, at any point, that she could ignore this, let it slide by. And in retrospect, she could not have said why.

* * *

The trip upriver had been the easy part. It was only about an hour up the river, but it was built on a cliff, long metal pipes discharging viscous substances directly into the water. There was a pale-green foam which gathered at the mouths of those pipes, even against the driving rain. It was visible, because even in the darkness, it glowed a little. Getting up that hill, in this weather, in the darkness? That would be troublesome.

"It annoys me that those peasants could simply accept this," Azula muttered darkly, moving through the wet forest. "They are Fire Nation, aren't they? They aren't acting it."

"Because they're all poisoned," Ked said evenly.

"Please. A real Fire Nation citizen would fight back from the first moment. In Azul, there is a saying; 'Annihilation before occupation'. We are supposed to be indefatigable, unstoppable, a force of nature. Not cowards and lackadaisical plebs, accepting death as it comes," Azula seemed to be quite in a taking about this. And he couldn't easily say why.

"Maybe it's because of the Painted Lady," Ked posited. She stopped staring flatly at him in the dark. "They have a belief system predicated around spirit worship," he began, and she rolled her eyes, starting to move forward again. "Their chief object of worship was a river spirit, manifesting as a woman with red and white skin, wearing a veil of fog. And they call her..."

"The Painted Lady, obviously. I am not stupid. You don't need to repeat yourself to make implications explicit," Azula said.

"I was referring to the fact that they call her when illness of the body or mind comes about," Ked said, switching gears quickly. She was right. She was not an idiot, by any stretch of the imagination. "But I think that when this happened to the river, she became weakened, somehow. Or maybe just blocked off."

"So the people keep praying to a being which has no power because of the reason that they're praying to her to change?" Azula shook her head, her dark bangs flicking away water. "This is why I can never understand the religious mindset. Needless supplication to forces which don't care, or are powerless to help."

"It's not always that easy to classify," Ked said. "My culture has a pantheon, some spirits, some things which can only be called 'gods'. There was a triumvirate heading the pantheon, up until about eight years ago."

"Really? You can know the workings of the divine to within a year?" Azula asked sarcastically.

"Yes," Ked said. "But my point is that people have beliefs that give them comfort when they're hurting. Can't you say you would be happier if you had somebody who you knew would always look over you, protect you when you were hurt or ill, support you when you need aid?"

"I don't need aid," Azula said, finally clearing the worst of the brush, and the facility coming into sight. It was a ghastly, dark metal behemoth, ugly angles and iron down every wall. It wasn't because he was a Tribesman that it seemed inelegant; he had seen foundries in Grand Fire, and they had much more aesthetic appeal than this. "And I have never needed somebody to watch me. That sounds dangerously close to perversion, to me."

"I wouldn't knock it until you've tried it," Ked offered. He looked at the bulkhead door blocking the way inside. "So how do we get in? I don't think I can get at the lock from this side. Maybe we can crawl through a vent some-"

Ked was cut off when Azula manifested a whip of electric blue flame, slashing through the bulky, iron hinges. She let the whip die, and the door groaned as it slowly fell outward onto the ground. "Or we could walk right in," Azula said, a smirk on her face, as she strode over the portionally molten door. Ked followed after, having to squint as she ignited a ball of blue flame above her hand, staring down at the floor sunk into the cliff. The entire facility was... _off_.

"This isn't a refinery," Ked said.

"Of course it isn't," Azula agreed, albeit harshly. "Refineries are hot. They smell like metal. This place..." she quickly walked over to one of the great ovens and incautiously laid her hand inside its mouth. She frowned. "These haven't been active for at least a day. No refinery shuts down that long and..."

"It was still pumping that... shit... into the river," Ked said. Azula nodded.

"It isn't producing _metal_," she said. "So what is it producing?"

Ked headed to a room overlooking the factory floor. Leaving the firebender to walk the floor, he pulled the water out of his flask, and smashed the lock with it. It took about three tries before he could focus the water enough to get it to break the lock. He was really going to have to practice other waterbending styles beyond healing, it was becoming obvious.

Inside, the room only contained a few lanterns for light. He quickly set one, and used its light to rummage. There wasn't a soul in the area, and it quickly became obvious why, as he rifled through the papers on and in the desk. There were entirely too few people working at this building to be a worthwhile refinery. But just enough... to run an experiment.

He was about to call for her when Azula shouldered her way through the door, setting down a glass vessel harshly. She ignited fire over her fingertips, and touched it to the clear fluid inside. The fluid caught, with a greenish-blue flame. She had a very dark look on her face. "There were hundreds of barrels of this... substance."

"They aren't making metal," Ked confirmed. "That was never what this place was here for. They set this place up to test _chemical_ weapons."

"Who? My brother? He's too soft to invent a new way to hurt people. He'd just apologize and hold their hands until they got better."

"No, not him. This place has been around for almost a decade, but only started seeding the water..." he flipped through the paper again, "about six years ago. It's been authorized by somebody called Minister Qin."

"Qin?" she said. Ked nodded. She scowled. "He did nothing without _father's_ direction."

"We have to do something about this," Ked said, earnestly. "I know somebody in Yokai, it's just an hour from Hachiman. If we bring the evidence..."

"Leave this building."

Ked's eyes widened. "What?" he asked. Azula stared at him.

"Leave this building, now," she said. "And you might want to get some distance."

"W..."

"This is your last chance to start running," she said. Ked took stock of the look on her face, and took her advice, breaking into a sprint past her and out of the building of horrors. He had made it to the treeline before he allowed himself to come to a stop. He turned, looking at that behemoth. A minute passed. It became two.

"What are you doing, Az-"

Ked's question was cut off when the entire building detonated. The roof lifted off in a single piece, vanishing into the rain, while each wall was split to chunks and sent spiraling away in one of the cardinal directions. The shock wave threw Ked to the ground painfully, and a ringing sounded in his ears. When he forced himself back up, the ball of fire was still rising, harshly illuminating the dark rain with blue-green flame. The fireball expanded, rising, until it began to dissipate. The roof crashed down, shearing through the pipes that descended to the river, and crashed into the mouth of the cove, walling in a bay of filth. Ked's mind took a moment to fully understand what had just happened. Then, he got unsteadily to his feet, and started shouting.

"Lady Azula! Are you alright?" he shouted. His voice was muffled to his own ears. He screamed her name again, and this time, he saw something moving from the flames which lingered unnaturally, despite the driving rain. A form, silhouetted against the night by fires. He stumbled over to that form, standing proud against the destruction. Azula, utterly unscathed, and looking utterly furious. "What..."

"It has been dealt with," Azula said quietly, but not a bit softly. "And we will not speak of this again. Clear?"

"Perfectly, Lady Azula."

* * *

Mongke lit his long pipe off of the ruins of a burning building in the great, cosmopolitan city of Grand Ember. Screams sounded in the distance. Some of fear and pain and death. Others of rage. He was the source of both. The flavorful leaves catching well, he began to puff, before tipping up a chair and sitting in it, as Grand Ember burned.

"This had better work," Ogedai, his good right hand, said. He was an Earth Kingdom native, he, but he had been taken as a slave during the later years of Azulon's rule. He grew up Fire Nation to his bones. He was squat and hirsute, like those he had recently fought against. His loyalty was beyond question, though.

"It will," Mongke said, slowly releasing a plume of smoke. "I notice you have been favoring Jeong Jeong's little present."

Ogedai didn't smirk nor smile; it was an expression he was incapable of. But he came as close as he ever would, pulling just a finger of jet black blade. "It is a remarkable piece. It cuts metal like molten butter. I think I will hold on to this one."

"You were always one to restrain your perverse sexual lusts to your weapons, Ogedai," Vachir's sibilant voice taunted. Both men, sitting calm amongst the ashes and carnage, turned to behold the grey-skinned third of what had been reduced to a trio. Even their titular Rhinos had been lost over the harsh years.

"You don't have the Princess," Ogedai said stoically.

"There were complications," Vachir said smoothly.

"I doubt Jeong Jeong will care about that. You still failed," Ogedai pointed out, giving voice to Mongke's mind.

"The complication was Sokka Baihu."

Mongke let out a grunt. There was a name he would have rather not heard again in this life. The stories of the Avatar invariably mentioned, more than any other companion, the one who couldn't bend anything, but still had the balls to go toe to toe with the most fearsome people on the planet. That sort of guts didn't come often, or easily. If he had been a bit older, and not so dead set on toppling Ozai, Mongke would have recruited him in a heartbeat. Instead, they were enemies. What a pain in the ass.

"Well, next time, we'll kill him dead as nails," Mongke said with a grunt. He paused, then looked at Vachir again. Blood was running down his tunic. "Got yourself stabbed again?"

Vachir smiled in exactly the way sharks don't, and pulled up a bloody tongue on a leather thong. "A man thought he could give me lip," Vachir said. "So I corrected him."

"Well don't make a habit of it," Mongke said idly. He pointed the stem of his pipe at Vachir. "Have you been able to locate the actress yet? She could be invaluable."

"Not a word so far," Vachir said, tucking the tongue away. That unpleasant grin returned. "But I know that she'll surface soon enough. Her talents cannot be understated. Somebody will recognize her, and when that happens, she'll be mine."

A smile grew on his face. "Isn't it lovely when a plan comes together?"

"You mean a riot, don't you?" Ogedai asked.

"To my mind, they are one and the same," Mongke said with a grin.

* * *

The pained grunt was the only warning Azula got as she leapt out of a nightmare and into a different one, this her waking life. Through action borne of rote, she spun to her feet, an arc of fire blazing toward her as-yet unidentified target. It smashed into him, the power of it knocking him back and away. She blinked a few times, shaking away the sleep. Expending that much of her chi at once, as she had a scant four hours ago, made for a terrific show, but was understandably draining.

As her mind caught up with her body, she beheld that she had knocked somebody off of Chan, who was scrambling to get back to his feet. He lashed down at the man with a bolt of fire into the chest. Azula turned away, not wanting to be part of that messy business, until Chan turned to her. "Lady Azula? Are you alright?"

"What is the meaning of this?" she demanded, rising to stand proudly despite wearing nothing but a thin night-dress. Luckily for Chan, his eyes were locked on hers, and they didn't stray to her form. Chan was also sweating.

"They've taken the villagers into the center of the town," Chan said, his voice clipped, professional. "They must have mistaken Ked for one, too. They're demanding the identity of some terrorist."

"I see," Azula said.

"We should," Chan glanced away, as though ashamed. "We... should leave. This isn't our concern. Besides, Ked is no loss."

"...Perhaps," Azula said. Her gaze drifted away for a moment. She _should_ leave Ked behind. She'd used him as much as she needed to. She had her strength back. That was all that mattered. But, a tiny part of her mind reminded her, he also was very useful in other respects. And he was compelled by desperation to loyalty. That sort of man does not come about very often, and never so easily. "Show me."

"It would be a... waste of time," Chan said, confused at her reaction.

"I said show me," Azula repeated. Chan looked at her, and grew a few shades paler as he considered the reaction he'd gotten from her the last time he'd opened his fool mouth and said the wrong thing. _Doing_ the wrong thing would have drastically higher consequences, obviously. He quickly flung her a cloak, which was obviously of local manufacture because it was the color of rust, and fraying heavily at the hem. Still, it would keep the rain off.

Chan guided her into the heart of the village, where the sum population had been gathered, even the children. That fire began to burn again, licking at her soul. An anger that she could only marginally control, and not really understand. She scanned the soldiers ringing the fearful crowd, and her gaze passed over Ked, who was trying to calm a young woman with an infant. He gave her a glance back, as though expecting something significant to pass between them. She then turned further, and found what was probably the most senior officer in this garrison, notably due to the sheer number of scars on his face alone. She strode toward him, but two of his cronies intercepted her.

"What is the meaning of this?" she asked tersely. Chan had hung back, and was moving around the soldiers quietly.

"In the night, a terrorist destroyed the refinery up the river," he said, crossing thick arms before a barrel chest. "As soon as the culprit identifies himself, we'll deal with him, and the others will be let go. If he is a coward and doesn't, then..."

"Then you slaughter the lot of them?" Azula asked. "That is barbaric and savage. It brings us down to the level of our enemies and makes us lesser. I will not have it."

"You talk with a sharp tongue, woman," the soldier said. Oh, that was the wrong word to address her by. "I'm wondering why you're not in with the crowd?"

"I am not, because that crowd had nothing to do with the destruction of that 'refinery', which we both know fully well had nothing to do with manufacturing metal. Experimenting on our own civilians? You should be ashamed," Azula said darkly. It was one thing to test weapons against soldiers on the battlefield, but against one's own people? Worse than barbarism.

"What do you know about..." the soldier began.

"What is your name, soldier?" she demanded.

"I am General Mung," he said with a sour scowl on his lacerated face. "And I could ask you who you are. Before I burn you where you stand on suspicion of terrorism."

Azula hurled back her hood, glaring golden eyes into his own dark hazel. Instant recognition dawned on him, as he saw her, somehow standing before him, her bangs dripping in the rain, murder on her expression. The only thing she didn't have was the paint for her lips, but it was enough to drive Mung back a step. "Your grandstanding is pointless, General. You will not find your terrorist in that pile of nobodies."

"And why not?"

"Because _I_ destroyed that building," she answered. "It is a black mark against my family and my father's name. Now you are going to limp back to whatever superiors remain, and tell them that the experiment is over, and will not be repeated."

"And why not, _Princess_?" Mung asked, twisting the inflection on her former title. "Word is, you're crazy and imprisoned. You don't have much clout in this part of the world. So step aside and let us do our jobs, as we always intended to, and erase this experiment completely."

Azula's expression dropped away, a mask of complete emptiness over a blaze which threatened to consume her completely. "Erase everything. Meaning them. Killing your own people. Even _Father_ never stooped that low."

"There's a lot you don't know about your father, girl," Mung said. He jabbed two blunt fingers into the center of her chest, pushing her back. She was so shocked that he had the gall to attempt it that he actually made physical contact, her eyes flaring wide. "Kill them all. No survivors."

That was all Azula needed. She may be a monster, but she was a better monster than he.

She lashed out, a shockwave blasting him away so hard that it broke several of his ribs and shattered his hand, sending him skipping atop the poisoned water. The soldiers stared, for the moment stunned, as their commander vanished under the scum before thrashing his way to the surface. And now, there were only fifteen against Azula.

And Chan. Chan took a flying leap into the mass, landing a brutal kick to the side of the head of one of the soldiers. Ked rose, and made a dramatic gesture, and water began to surge up from between the panels under his feet. Not much, not nearly as much as that peasant girl who humiliated her during what should have been her coronation. And he seemed to be utilizing a lot more effort to do it. A whole body twist launched that liquid missile at one of the firebenders who had ringed the civilians, knocking him down. Another twist, upward, and the water looped back around, scooping him up and hurling him into the river. One of that soldier's contemporaries launched a bolt of fire at Ked. He didn't even dodge, he just turned somewhat, so that the bolt would burst along his back, rather than in his chest, the force propelling him into the peasants who would have taken the attack had he not. She would have scowled at the act, at the insanity of it, if she had time. But now, her body was taking over, and fire began to flow.

Her lack of sleep and the fact the sun had not yet even risen into the sky worked against her. That she decided to blow up a building in such a flamboyant, if satisfying, way did as well. Chan began screaming for the people to scatter, to flee. The wood caught under the attacks of the firebenders, and raged, barely held in place by the driving rain which tried desperately, and futilely to quench Azula's wrath. Her blazing blue attacks seared out, and smashed through the defenses of the soldiers, common firebenders of no significant ability or power. She might as well be fighting infants.

Chan was not having so easy a time. He was a passable firebender, not as strong as she by a solid measure, but fairly skilled despite that. But vexingly, he did not firebend. No, he matched his shoulders with his muscle, smashing them with haymaker punches and brutal front and circle kicks. To break up the monotony, he would grab a tool, a piece of pottery, a piece of furniture left for mending, and smash it over the head or chest of one of his assailants. It seemed he was handicapping himself, until he finally managed to knock one back a few steps, and blasted him with a discrete bolt of flame, right in the center of the neck, before turning and continuing his melee.

Azula easily dodged around the attacks made by those unfortunate soldiers who couldn't firebend. And she easily deflected those attacks made by those pathetic peons who could. And when she pressed, she kept smashing through their defenses, but every time an opening showed itself, a part of her... recoiled. Hesitated. "Finish them!" Chan screamed from his place across the square which overlooked the river on one side. Luckily, while the people had not moved significantly, the soldiers were focused exclusively on those who had been attacking them. Ked, pulling water up to douse his burning flesh, cast that same bloody water at the soldier who wounded him, in the form of sharp, spikes of ice. They sunk into his armor with a sickening thunk. He then pushed his way through the crowd toward Chan, and began to heave.

Water began to surge up in a mound between two buildings. Then, Ked yanked backward with one fist, and the water seemed to separate, part of it slipping back down into the river, but another transparent fluid coating the four soldiers engaged with Chan. "Light it!" Ked shouted. Chan did not hesitate. He turned and blasted out with a wide wave of fire, which caught on the soldiers like they were made of tinder. Their screams actually made Azula stumble. The last time she heard screams like that, they were coming from her older brother. She smiled then. But now? It was like being punched in the face.

Which was when she got punched in the face. It knocked her down, and she had to take a long moment to dispel the fuzziness from her sight and thoughts. It had been a very, very long time since she had been so lax as to actually receive a blow. She cursed herself for being distracted, and dragged herself to her feet. The soldiers had run to their small, two man vessels, and were fleeing down river.

"We have to stop them!" Chan said. "They know about you!"

Chan hurled a ball of flame out at them, but it landed well behind them, igniting the water. Azula scowled, and she felt her body moving...

"Yes. Do it. Kill them all, be the monster everybody says you are," her twisted double said, standing beside her.

"You are not a monster," Ursa's voice came from the other side, but was not matched with a double.

"She is. She knows it. This is the only way to keep herself safe. Of course she's going to do it. She'll even enjoy it."

"I am a monster, nothing can change that," Azula muttered, faltering in her stance. She gathered herself, and tried again. It was a long shot, through the rain, in the dark. One shot, one blast of fire.

And people would die.

"Not just a monster but a coward," the dopple laughed. "She wants to kill, but she's too weak to stomach it. Isn't she just the most pathetic thing you've ever seen?"

"Why must she _want_ to kill?" Mother's answer came.

"Stop this!" Azula screamed. "I will not play host to a fight between two voices inside my own head!"

"You won't what?" Chan asked.

And this time, spurred not by rage or wrath or even mindless savagery, but by embarrassment, a bolt of blue fire rocketed away from her fingertips, into the rain. And when it landed, the explosion was great indeed. So great, that the river began to catch fire entirely. Her eyes went wide, beholding how she had probably killed herself.

"Fitting," the dopple said, walking out of eyeshot and her voice fading as she moved. "The monster destroys herself by her own hand. How... predictable."

"What... have I...?" Azula said, staring at that wall of flame pressing back, up the river, against the current, as it swept toward the town. Her mind scrambled backward, trying to keep itself running against the pressing weight of _what she'd done_, and find some way to save herself. That wasn't enough. Anything like that was too small. Then, her fracturing mind focused on Zuzu, on the way he'd fought, the way he'd beaten her. The Katas he'd employed lurched into place in her memory, unsteady, inconsistent. Hardly perfect, but it was all she had to work with.

She swept her arms forward, then up and in a slow circle. Instead of projecting flame, she simply controlled that firestorm which was moving toward her. And she peeled it upward, edges rolling it back, sending the fire back down the flow of the river. It was a display of skill and power that almost nobody on this planet could match. And she did it with barely a thought.

So why did she still feel like she was failing?

* * *

Ked stared in awe as Azula sent the fire twisting away from Jang Hui, pushing it first off the water, than into the wet foliage where it didn't have the heat to ignite. He didn't even know that a firebender was capable of controlling that much naked flame. Even Chan was gaping as she finally let her arms drop to her sides. The last flames flickered, losing the battle against the rain, and died, half a league from the wharf.

"That was... amazing," Ked muttered.

Azula turned, and her eyes were snapping with rage. "Are you happy now?" she shouted, golden eyes burning at the crowd which huddled still in the heart of the square. "Has this assuaged your stupid system of beliefs? Did you pray for somebody to save you? People don't care, you idiots! Nobody came here to help you!"

"Azula, what are you talking about?" Ked asked, but she shoved him away brusquely, focusing her ire on the civilians.

"Do you think there are really people who just go around, helping the helpless and defending the weak?" she demanded loudly, face beginning to turn a bit red. "If you do, then you're _even bigger idiots_. There aren't people like that in the world! There's only people like _me_! I didn't save you! If I could have, I would have left you to your deaths! You were so confident that your precious 'Painted Lady' would save you that you did NOTHING for _six years_, while you got sick, and you died, **and it is entirely your fault**!"

"I think they've..." Chan began, but she ignored him.

"Nothing changes unless somebody changes it!" Azula roared, ignoring the wetness on her face. For some reason, Ked could swear it was... No. It _couldn't_ be tears. "Your inaction damned you to madness and sickness, and in a just world, you would have been left to your death! You weep as your children are stillborn, but then do nothing to save them? Then don't claim to me that they're the monsters; the only people who deserve punishment are you! You ignorant, cowardly fools!"

"Azula, that's enough!" Ked said. Azula spun to him, two fingers thrust forward just under his nose. He felt an understandable thrill of terror, but her eyes weren't saturated with rage. There was something else there.

"Don't you dare tell me what to do," Azula hissed. She stared at him for a long time. Then, she tilted her head, as though hearing something, and her hand slowly lowered. "We're leaving. Now. I can't stand the stink of this place any longer."

"But the storm..." Chan said

"Will be ignored," Azula said. "We leave. Now."

As the woman walked away, Chan had a very perplexed look on his face. He shot a glance to Ked. "Hey, Ked."

"Yeah, Chan?"

"Why do I get the feeling like if I ever got horizontal with that woman, I wouldn't be the man in the relationship?" he asked. Ked let out an unexpected laugh.

"Oh, you'd be the man, alright," Ked said, clapping Chan on the shoulder. "Of course, she'd be the _Azula_."

Chan couldn't do anything with that but nod with a grunt of understanding.

Azula, to her credit, waited just long enough for Chan to return with all of their things, before having the firebender chart a course up the river. Ked tried to get her speaking again, but she rebuffed him silently when he tried. So, he spent a few hours healing the burns on his back. She pointedly avoided looking at the wreckage of the facility as they passed it, then reached the fork in the river. The rain began to die down as the day went on, and by the evening, was a bare sprinkle, and they were close to Hachiman. Not close enough, though.

Chan pulled the skiff into the bank of the river, and set up a small camp with decent alacrity. Chan also seemed disturbed by what had just happened, and didn't want to speak either. It was a dreary, wet, silent trip. As Ked set his tired, weary body down on his damp bedroll, he had two thoughts. One was once again cursing the luck that he had never invested in something outside the realm of healing. The other was in the form of a prayer.

"_Yue, I begged for strength and wisdom_," he intoned, quietly and in his own tongue, as Chan and Azula huddled close to the fire. He was still somewhat used to the cold. "_I begged that it would pass, and I would see clearly again. That somehow, when she awakened, I would see it for the folly it was. But it hasn't passed. It is still with me, and I cannot fight it. Why? Why would you put me on this course? Please, I need your wisdom. Why must it be __**her**__?_"

* * *

Azula jerked upright, gasping trying to shake the feeling of hands clasped hard around her throat. Nightmares. Always nightmares. How long had it been since she'd had anything but? She ran fingers over her neck. Despite only being a dream, it still felt tender, bruised. The Tribesman was sleeping nearby. He always asked her, almost every day, what she was dreaming about. She lied when she told him she didn't remember. She remembered. She remembered every single dream. And it ground at her like a sandstorm.

Silently, she rose and headed out from under the broad tarp-tent which Chan had set up. The rain pelted at her, chilling her. But she ignored it. It wasn't worth thinking about, especially with that one notion repeating in her head.

She killed people.

Azula was quick with death-threats, but she had never actually had to carry them out before. And when she did... it was a lot more distressing than she had anticipated. She could remember how she felt when she struck down the Avatar, in Ba Sing Se. Since he didn't stay dead, it didn't really count, but at the time, it had felt glorious. And then, the next time she honestly tried to kill somebody, when she almost succeeded...

Even as a part of her mind tried to recoil, she forced it to focus. Mai. The Agni Kai, the last time her lightning obeyed her, and she used it to strike at Mai. Why did she do that? It made no sense. Doing that would have voided her position in the Agni Kai, forfeited the victory to Zuko. And it didn't earn her anything. Zuko could have struck her down in a heartbeat while she was focused on directing that lightning at her old friend, her new traitor. Yes, she betrayed Azula. But why did Azula try to kill her?

She hated being out of control. That was what it was. She was so far-gone that she could barely think. How had she lost control so completely, so utterly? What happened to her? Why did one admitted bastard's death eat at her so, when striking down the Avatar was the height of her triumph? _What had changed in her_?

"It must be the Tribesman," she said quietly, ignoring the rain and the fact she couldn't feel her fingers or toes anymore. She was shivering hard, her teeth chattering, a she stood on the banks of the river. Past the fork, past the facility, the waters ran pure and clean. It was like that miscarriage of authority never existed. "What did he do to me?" she asked.

She tried to summon anger, but a fog was rising, narrowing her eyes as she looked out at the wide, flowing waters. It mounted quickly, coalescing into a wavy form, which slowly pulled solid, into the form of a woman. Red, like glowing blood, ran over her body, between fog pressed solid and glowing white. Any words died in Azula's throat as she beheld the spirit, as that painted face stared down at her, red eyes staring into golden. It reached forward an oddly proportioned, four fingered hand, and cupped Azula's chin. There was a flare of light.

_YOU ARE MORE THAN WHAT HE MADE YOU_.

The words exploded through her mind, and the flare faded; the spirit, the Painted Lady, slowly came apart as the mists separated, the glowing blood slipping back down into the water. Azula stumbled away from the river, her mind firing so fast that it felt like there was static echoing through her thoughts. She got back to the tent, and sat on her bedroll. Spirits existed. She knew that. But to encounter one... It was an unsettling experience. She felt her eyelids grow heavy, and she eventually slumped back into sleep.

When she did, she felt... the appreciation of the Painted Lady. She dreamed, not of violence and shame and pain and fear, but of a brightly painted box, a silly old man in a young man's body, and a delicious spongy chocolate cake. A perfectly normal, perfectly pleasant, dream. The first she'd had in recent recollection.

* * *

**Can you believe that girl? Pah.**

_Leave a review._


	5. Fear

**God, writing during the aftermath of the Great Computer Death of '11 was a bit more taxing than I had anticipated. It's a damned good thing that I write with a gigantic buffer, because if I hadn't, then this wouldn't have been able to be up at all. If an automated system were put up, I could die tomorrow, and because the chapters kept going up on a weekly basis, nobody'd even notice until almost two months from now. I'm currently writing the chapter which constitutes the half-way point of the story. It's odd, but while Fear Arc has combat in almost every chapter, of the first four chapters of Hatred Arc, only one of them has a fight in it. Writing with a buffer is an important part of my style, though: If I want to change something so that a new chapter has more punch, I can go back to one of the chapters in the buffer and alter that as well, making what would seem to come out of nowhere instead be hinted at and pointed to before hand. I'm good at planning stories, but I'm not that good.**

**For the first time, we get to see Azula at her full strength, at the peak of her power, without any clouding factors such as Sozin's Comet. Only for a moment, though, because she's not nearly ready to break out with the no-holds-barred beatdown which she delivers during Hatred Arc. And we also see what kind of fight Sokka puts up when he doesn't have the element of surprise on his side.**

**This is a more sedate chapter, all told, as it deals with some problems which can't be cut nor punched nor set on fire. Loss, grief, and death. Azula starts to figure out that she really is six years behind the ball, and that her attempts to play catch up aren't going as well as she thought. People, all kinds of people, have moved on with their lives, and she's stuck exactly where she was as a teenager, denied a half-decade of growth. And it wasn't even her fault. She's well on the way to a defeat on a scale usually reserved for the Gaang in late Season 2. **

* * *

_"Let me guess. Next, you're going to blame your antisocial tendencies on being perpetually alone and alienated," Azula said off-handedly. "That somebody unloved will inevitably lash out against everybody around them and lose their minds."_

_"Hell, no. I've been loved," Bi said with a small, distant smile. "Jet was a lot of things. He was my teacher. He was my mentor. He was my leader. And yeah, he was my lover for a while, too," Azula's expression must have been incredulous, because she shot her a look. "What? I was a teenager, and he made me feel pretty. But let me tell you, did it ever piss me off when he got all grabby with that barbarian girl."_

_"Men are pigs," Azula agreed._

_"I'm sitting right here," Ked complained._

_"Well, you are," Azula confirmed. "How many blue eyed girls did you love and leave before you landed in the Fire Nation? And how many hapless Nationals did you ply with that somewhat-presentable face?"_

_"When did this become about me?" Ked muttered, leaning back. "Look, I've never been a lady's man. I've never sought to be. And while since the War ended, there's no shortage of lonely widows 'utilizing' some of my quite-enthusiastic brethren – I'm pretty sure I saw Senneq a year ago 'entertaining' Lady Yomi – not every Tribesman is trolling the civilized world for exotic encounters."_

_"And by encounters, you mean vaginas," Bi prompted._

_Ked got a sour look on his face. "I was trying to be genteel. And it's vaginae."_

_Bi didn't stop smirking, though. "So what are you lookin' for in a man? Flinching and subservient, if I guess right?"_

_Azula shook her head slowly. "Extraordinarily attractive, intelligent, articulate, and willing to let me be who I am," Azula said, a bit more bitterly than she expected. Her eyes rose. "I am powerful. And I refuse to make myself less for anybody."_

_"Preach it, sister," Bi said. "Ah, love, power, and the destruction of the world. Everything a Fire Nation princess needs for romance."_

_Azula smirked. "What else could I ever want? Power, the obedience of my people, the destruction of my enemies, having their broken bodies cast at the ground at my feet while the survivors wail. I'm sure you would want the same, in my position."_

_"And if you were in mine, I'm sure all you'd want was the key to these shackles and that door, a pair of hookswords, and a clear path at somebody in red armor," Smellerbee said, her voice sotto. "What we want is completely dependent on where we are, what we've done. Hell, I'm pretty sure if I get out of here, I ain't gonna kill you. We're a lot more alike then I could have imagined. But we both have things which we have to pursue, because if we don't, we lose who we are."_

_Azula turned to Ked, leaning forward over the table. He looked up, ignoring her cleavage and matching her gaze with his own. "I really wonder what you want," Azula asked, a smoky smile on her face._

_Ked's eyes turned to Smellerbee, then back to Azula's. "I just want everybody I care about to be safe."_

_Azula frowned. "You're lying. You must have some ambition. You can't be that lazy and shiftless."_

_"I wouldn't call it shiftless, unambitious," Ked said. "I just know exactly what I need in order to be happy. And it's not very much. I could be happy, starving to death on a deserted island, if I knew that everybody I loved was safe and healthy and happy. Well, I'd be happier if I wasn't starving to death, but... Wanting to do for others doesn't make you weak. It forces you to be strong," Azula scoffed, but Ked leaned forward suddenly, his nose almost brushing against her, intensity in his dark blue eyes. "So tell me, if you really know what you want, you'd be able to answer this. Will it make you happy, to have all of that? Are you sure that is what you really want?"_

_"Of course it is," Azula dismissed. But even then, a part of her knew it was a lie_.

* * *

**Chapter 5: Fear**

* * *

The entire vessel shifted slowly under her feet. That was the only reason she could see it at all. Usually, these craft were made of wood, but her senses worked better through metal, so she procured enough of that shining, lightweight metal that the Tribesmen guarded like gold, and she had somebody build this thing out of it. Iron would have been easier, but it wouldn't have been buoyant, and would have tired Anila too much. She was a patient one, probably as old as the passenger on this vessel, which was no mean feat for a sky bison. And Iroh was not young.

"Flyboy says we'll be in Ba Sing Se soon enough," Toph said, kicking up her feet onto the table which was bolted to the floor. It had to be. Otherwise, it'd fly about at random. Most people called these craft 'flying houses'. They were about as big as a Fire Nation airship, but without wasting all that space for boilers and engines, so they were much lighter.

"I must thank you for the flight," Iroh said politely. "I did not think I would make it back to the city in time. Instead, I will be there in advance."

"Of what?" Toph asked.

"Just... In advance," Iroh said. Toph didn't need eyes to know that the Cool Old Guy was holding something back, but at the same time, she really didn't care. She had her own things to deal with. As she had expected, accumulating her own fortune had been far easier than anybody could have guessed, but at the same time, it was far less edifying. Sure, knowing that she had a family who loved her enough to trust in her capabilities was nice, as was the freedom to do pretty much whatever the hell she wanted, and having enough time and contemplation to come to terms with the fact that she was essentially a hundred and seventy years old. Of course, a hundred and fifty of that was spent as two different _men_; gender identity wasn't something that Toph Beifong put a lot of thought into, before that Summer Solstice, when she learned the truth. Now, she was just barely getting a grasp on what it meant to actually be a woman.

"You seem different from the last time we talked," Iroh said, pouring himself a cup of tea. He always drank tea when they met, and every time Toph swung past Ba Sing Se, they would inevitably cross paths. She never regretted that fact. Iroh was a friend across two generations.

"Had a few big changes," Toph said nonchalantly.

"I hear you finally married the young man at the helm," Iroh said politely.

"You make it sound like I was holding something up. Why? Did you have a wager that I'd be the last to get hitched?" Toph grinned. "Did you win?"

"My wager was not on you," Iroh said.

Toph laughed at that, a deep, belly laugh, more suited to the old man sitting opposite her than the underdeveloped twenty one year old woman it erupted from. She reached blindly – in both senses of the word – to one side and caught a falling bottle of that Azuli potato-liquor as it fell out of the cupboard when the flying house tilted a bit too far in one direction. Never one to pass up an opportunity, she ripped the cork out with her rough-callused fingers, and tilted the bottle back. She could _feel_ Iroh's eyes widen at the spectacle.

"Are you sure you should be drinking that? Considering..."

"Hey, it's been almost a year since I could knock back some 'shoka'. And don't get me started on tryin' to drink in the taverns. Every time I try to order some whiskey or Sake or wine, they always tell me _they can't serve to children_. Damn it, my mother was younger than I am when she gave birth to me!"

"Still, drinking dulls the mind," Iroh said.

"Then let it be dull," Toph said, raising a toast, before taking a lengthy pull from the bottle, before stoppering it up again and shoving it harder into the cupboard, and making sure the damned thing latched this time. She wasn't going to waste perfectly good alcohol.

A resounding thunk, coupled with Toph suddenly being able to 'see' an area an order of magnitude larger, told her that Teo had landed. Also, the discontented mutterings from a tiny form in another room told her that she would be justified in whacking Teo upside the head for being sloppy in the landing. She let her chair rock forward and set her feet on the metal floor. "I guess this is goodbye, then?" she asked.

"We both know our paths will cross again," Iroh said placidly, drinking the last of his tea. She got up and gave the old man a hug. He always accepted her as she was, and she always appreciated it. To him, she wasn't blind and helpless; no, to him, she was Toph. "I'm surprised you aren't coming. Ba Sing Se is wonderful this time of year."

"Come on, we both know it's, like, the worst city in the world," Toph dismissed. "Besides, I've got a buyer I have to meet in Chuo Yan. I can't let the business flounder for the sake of a cup of tea," she paused. "Even if it is the best damned tea on the planet. I'll be back when I've got some time to kill. And when I don't have all this shit on my plate," she added at a mutter.

"I see," Iroh said. He stepped away and bowed. "We will meet again in interesting days."

With that, the old man, the Dragon of the West, the Savior of Ba Sing Se, departed into the city which once rested firmly in the hands of the enemy. Ah, the good old days, when she had permission to pound the hell out of any Dai Li agent she found. She could feel one, just on the edges of her perception, trying to be sneaky. She could also feel other flying houses touched down in the broad courtyard. The Wind Nomads were only a few years old, but between the war-orphans left by the Weary War and those wanderlust-y individuals Twinkletoes and Sugarqueen were gathering, the movement had gained steam quickly. Even faster when Toph's beau came up with the idea for these mobile habitations.

Which reminded Toph. She marched down the same hallway as Iroh, but kept going where the old man turned off and set foot to stone. She ignored the noise she heard coming from the smaller of the three bedrooms for the moment and kicked the door to the helm open. Teo was sitting forward, using a hook to unfasten the braces from Anila's back. "And what the hell was that?" Toph demanded.

"What do you mean?" he asked. He asked with all the innocence with a child, which annoyed her, too. Both of them knew he could be anything but.

"You woke up Huang," Toph said flatly, letting the vein bulging at the side of her forehead spell out the implications of that mistake. She could feel him pale and his stomach flop. "You couldn't have landed a bit softer?"

"I'm sorry," he said, genuinely. "I got a bit... carried away."

"Well, don't do it again," Toph snapped. There was a long moment of silence.

"So, do you want me to..." he asked.

"No, I'll handle it. Just... do better in the future, alright?" she pressed. She turned back out of the perch, and stopped just shy of threshold. "And do you think you can make Chuo Yan by next week?"

"I'm sure I can," Teo said, that apprehension slipping out of him. Their relationship wasn't all touchy-feely like Twinkletoes and Sweetness, but Toph wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. Especially now. She moved back into the ship, and opened the door. Crying, high and even a little bit painful tore through the air, and she quickly hovered over the cradle which was suspended from the ceiling. Toph tutted, reaching down and scooping up the infant boy.

"You don't need to keep cryin'," Toph said gently. "Mama's here."

* * *

All things considered, Hachiman was a tiny city, barely even worthy of the name. It was possessed of a dry-dock, and it belched black smoke from its machines that ran in its industrial quarter, but it was so much smaller than Grand Ember, or even Fire Fountain City, that it could be best described as a town with delusions of industry. It was bustling. It was alive. And Azula hated it with all of her soul.

"This place is disgusting," she muttered to herself. For once, she couldn't blame her bad mood on lack of sleep, which itself was a result of terrible nightmares. No, her dreams had gone from soul-crushing to simply odd. But there was a pressure inside her, like something inside her was trying to get out and there was no path of least resistance, so the pressure could only build. "We should get transport away from here as fast as possible."

"Hey, I like this place," Chan said idly, walking beside her. "I grew up in a town like this."

"That explains more than you know," Azula muttered. "Certainly the smell."

"Grease, oil, and coal, the smells of industry," Chan confirmed proudly, a smirk on his face. "Unlike those duskrats on the other side of the Nation, everything we build is hand made by proud Embiar workers. None of that 'assembly line' garbage the Azuli use."

"And it makes you four times slower than them," Azula countered. She forced a sweet smile onto her face, and sing-song, asked. "Can we just skip your indignation at having your people defamed by reality for a moment and have you go be a dear and get us a boat to Betla?"

Chan gave her a look that illustrated how uncomfortable he was. Damn it. She would need practice to get back into her old, manipulative form. He gave a stiff bow, and strode away without another word. Her grasp on him was slipping, and it was nobody's fault but hers. She couldn't get leverage on him. Not anymore. Ever since Jang Hui, she was losing control again. And that _terrified her_.

Azula considered walking through Hachiman, getting a lay of the land, but she considered that she probably wouldn't be here long enough for knowledge of terrain to be important. So, she picked a seat in an outdoor cafe and seated herself. Even with the rest she was getting, she felt drained. And she didn't know why.

"It's because you're lying to yourself," Ursa's voice came out of nowhere.

"If you can't lie to yourself, who can you lie to?" Azula responded sarcastically. Ursa's voice had no answer for that.

"Is that a rhetorical question?" Ked answered, dragging Azula's attention to him with a start. He was almost as sneaky as Mai, as well as somehow being as perceptive, which was not a mean feat. She had completely forgotten that he was there. She gave him a glare, but shook her head. "You know, there's actually a lot of the Fire Nation that looks like this," he said, quickly swiping a news pamphlet from another table while its occupant was unaware and started flicking through it. "For all you almost conquered the planet under a tyrannical pall of fear and death, not to mention a firestorm which would likely have caused ecosystem devastation which would have rendered the Earth uninhabitable for humans in about a decade, I have to admit, you do fairly well in the 'quality of life' front for your citizens. Most of them, anyway."

"That sounded dangerously close to a compliment," Azula remarked. "Albeit one embedded in so much innuendo and back-handedness that it sounded like it could have come from one of my old classmates at the Academy."

"Really? Then it must be my uncouth barbarian showing," Ked said idly, a smirk on his face. "Because no civilized person would talk ill of the culture which almost eradicated my martial artform and society."

"What martial artform?" she asked. "As I recall, every time you get into trouble, it is either Chan or myself who has to save you from the flames. You're as good as helpless."

Ked shrugged. "I've dedicated myself to other pursuits."

"And you're significantly weaker than other waterbenders I've faced," Azula remarked lightly, her eyes scanning the crowds.

"The only waterbender you've ever fought, if the stories are right, was Master Katara. And she's a force of nature. Me? I'm just about average."

"Then average is pathetic."

Ked scowled at her. "Now you've gone and hurt my feelings," he said sarcastically. "Not everybody has to be great. Most live under the shadow of the greater. And there's nothing wrong with that. Not every tree in the forest can be as tall as the tallest. It would defeat the purpose."

"Is there a point to this?" Azula asked.

"No point. Just conversation."

"Then come up with a better topic," Azula said. "Like when we'll be leaving Hachiman."

"Soon enough. We'll be here long enough for a meal, at least," Ked said, reaching out and exchanging the pamphlet for a menu of a server walking past, cunningly enough that the man probably didn't even notice.

"You have quick hands," Azula said, considering.

"Hardly," Ked said. "I just grew up with a sister who'd put _anything_ in her mouth. No matter how obviously dangerous. Or on fire. Had to be quick."

"You should have let her get burned. Then, she would have learned."

"I couldn't do that," Ked said, a small smile and a distant look on his face. "I love my sister. I don't want her to be hurt."

"So you keep saying," Azula sighed in boredom. She let her mind wander, something she usually fought to avoid, and let it find what connections it would. Hachiman. Wait, something came into focus almost immediately. She had teachers, her old pedagogues who followed her up from childhood. They had served three generations of Fire Lords, and they both hailed from, and kept their 'permanent home' in, Hachiman. A smirk came to her face. Maybe she should visit Lo. Or was it Li? She'd banished one of them. She wasn't sure which.

She quickly got up and started walking the streets, the earlier funk which had descended upon her shrinking away for the moment. Ked quickly bounded up to keep pace with her. "Have somewhere you need to be?" Ked asked.

"I don't require a babysitter," Azula said idly. "Especially since that's where your talents seem to lie."

"You can't stand that your people accept me as a doctor, can you?" Ked asked, with a toying expression. She shot him a look with an expressionless face. It was a mask, like an animate doll was interacting with them. It unsettled people, and made them vulnerable. Ked didn't seem as fazed as he should have been. Her mask was slipping.

"There are many things I can't stand about you. Such as how you hover around me like my own personal thunderhead," she raised a brow. "You _are_ about as dark as one."

"Overt racism? That's beneath you," Ked dismissed. If she was a less controlled person, his flippancy would have driven her to reach out and slap him. His smirk was begging for it. He frowned for a moment. "So, where are we going, anyway?"

"I'd like to visit a specter from my past," she said. "My old teachers."

"Oh, that might be nice," Ked said. But then she could see the wheels turning in his mind. "Wait, are you talking about Lo and..."

"You are not invited. Go back to the idiot and make sure he doesn't spend all of his money on shiny things and pliant whores," Azula said.

"Azula, you do realize it's been six years, right?" Ked said, staying actually closer beside her, despite her desire for the opposite.

"So you continuously remind me," she said. "I told you to leave."

"I don't think you understand how much has changed in the last six years," Ked said hurriedly, the accent of his homeland beginning to slip into his words. "I mean it's understandable, but you aren't grasping how much things can..."

"You are yammering, do something about that," Azula said. She walked off without him, although only for a moment, before he ran to catch up with her. She rolled her eyes with disdain, understanding that he would not be so easily shaken. "If you are trying to be useful, then would you kindly tell me what the hell those are?"

She pointed into the sky. While there was the familiar, dull red form of an airship in the sky, there were also a pair of bright yellow objects up there as well. He squinted upward briefly, then let out a clipped chuckle. "Ah, right. You couldn't have known about the Wind Nomads."

"The Air Nomads were wiped out in Sozin's day," Azula dismissed.

"I didn't say _Air_ Nomads, I said _Wind_ Nomads. They've only been around a few years, but there's more of them all the time. It's the Avatar's pet project, or so the rumor goes," Ked shrugged. "I don't know much about them myself; you'd need to talk to an airbender."

"And just when I thought I might get some useful exposition," Azula said sarcastically.

"Why are you doing this, again?" Ked asked. "I mean, a lot has changed in six years."

"They betrayed me," Azula said darkly. "They subverted my authority and tried to usurp me in the day before my coronation. I just want to remind them that I have not forgotten their behavior."

"Usurp?" Ked asked. "Lady Azula, I think there's something you need to know about your teachers."

"Please, like you would know anything about the politics of this realm," Azula dismissed again. Once again, Ked ignored her dismissal, heeling close to her like a hound. "I grow tired of your suffocating presence."

"I know more than you'd think," Ked argued. "I did work directly at the behest of the Fire Lord for years. And you really should listen to me. Lo and..."

"There we are," Azula said, looking at the gates to the pedagogues' home. It was an old and stately manor, one the pair of them had almost forfeited by their reckless behavior in their youth. It was hard to imagine those two, identical, withered old crones were some of the most scandalous figures in Embiar politics for decades. Azulon's patronage either calmed them down, or wore them out. Either way, it had made respectable women out of them. She gave the front gates a sharp kick... and almost pitched herself backward when she found them locked. She caught her balance with a glare at Ked, as though he were somehow responsible. Even she couldn't delude herself to believe that.

"These should not be locked," Azula said.

"I was about to say..." Ked began.

"Silence," she answered, forcing a get of blue flame from her fingertips and slicing through the lock. The gates opened with a squeal, one of them catching on the cobbles of the path leading to the aged, wooden structure. The gardens had gone to fallow. The trees were untended. The entire estate reeked of disuse.

She walked forward, unsure of what to make of this place. Lo and Li would have thrashed the keepers to within a whisker of their lives for letting the place become so run down. Ked had a stricken look as he followed the Princess into the estate. She pushed on the doors, finding they, too, were locked. Every window was dark. Azula let out a growl, be it of frustration or anger, even she couldn't say, and kicked the door, splintering the bolt and slamming the door open. Inside, it was dark, and musty, and a thin layer of dust covered everything. Spiderfly webs abounded from every corner and crossbeam. This place was vacant.

"Lo and Li were old women," Ked said quietly. "They died. Four years ago."

Azula found herself falling to her knees, unable to comprehend how those old women could actually be dead. Was this grief? Regret? She felt a hand rest gently on her shoulder, and she couldn't do more than turn and look at it. It was Ked's.

"I'm sorry, Azula. I'm so very sorry. They're gone."

Azula shook her head. "Of course they are," she said quietly, bitterly. "Everybody leaves me in the end."

* * *

**God she's pathetic, ain't she?**

* * *

The sound was droning, loud, and familiar. He had cut his teeth on these things years ago, and practically invented them besides. Sure, Sokka hadn't had the dull, imposing bulk of a Fire Nation airship when he worked with the Mechanist to develop the first flying machine since, if his history was up to date, the fall of the Storm Kings, which certainly wasn't yesterday.

"Can you bring us in a little closer?" Sokka said loudly to the Embiar pilot. The situation in the Fire Nation was even more complex than he would have guessed. The Nation wasn't really a nation, so much as a coalition of three countries, all bending knee to the Fire Lord since Sozin's father brought them to heel over a century ago. They constantly flowed between many nations and one. Right now, it was seeming to flow toward the former, and the number of Embiar that Sokka could trust was remarkably low. The pilot was one of them; any friend of Aang's, however brief, was a friend of Sokka's. Usually.

"Of course I can," Shoji said with a grin. "How low do you want us? In the intersection? Or do you just want to scare the housewives on the roof?"

"Just low enough that I can see," Sokka shouted back. Shoji brought the craft lower. Sokka pulled the spyglass off of its rack and began to scan the crowds. "Better, but..."

"If you don't mind my asking, what makes you think they'll show up in Hachiman?" Shoji asked casually, as Sokka leaned out the window of the bridge with a spyglass to his eye.

"Call it a hunch," Sokka said. A hunch and some strange activity in the Spirit world, but Sokka would only admit to being a shaman five seconds before admitting to being a waterbender, and if he could get away with it, he'd want none other than the one dozen to know about the first, and take the second to his grave. In a way, the Painted Lady was an old regret; if Sokka hadn't been in such a damned hurry, driving Aang and the others across Ember without any happy delay, then he probably would have headed north instead of south, encountered Jang Hui, and had Aang do his Avatar hocus pocus instead of leaving the poor villagers to suffer.

Ah, the path not traveled.

No purpose blaming himself. There was no way he could have known, so when a half-insane firebending woman – and Sokka didn't need two guesses to deduce her identity – interacted with the guardian of Jang Hui, Sokka was off like a shot. Well, he was already off, but now he had a destination. There was only one worthwhile port on this island. Hachiman.

"It would have to be a hell of a hunch for the Fire Lord to lend you an airship," Shoji asked, obviously and inexpertly probing.

"He and I go way back," Sokka said noncommittally. A swing of the glass drifted past something which spurred his memory, and he swung it back. He recognized that walking wall of arrogance and muscle. "And so does that guy."

Shoji let out a grunt, before casting a glance over his shoulder at the Tribesman. "Has anybody ever told you you look a bit like Wang Fire?"

"Everywhere I go," Sokka said with a hidden smirk. "It's annoying as hell."

Sokka pulled himself back into the airship, and snapped the spyglass closed. "I take it you want me to set down?" Shoji asked.

"Hell no," Sokka said. "That'd be suspicious. No, you're not going anywhere near the ground."

"So we're just going to follow them?"

"I didn't say that," Sokka said. "You packed my rucksack in the... fore cargo hold, right?"

"As far as I'm aware," Shoji answered. "What was that, by the way? It was just a bunch of silk cloth."

"Very special silk cloth," Sokka corrected. He let out a nervous laugh. "Boy I hope I got this right. If I didn't, it's going to be a bit embarrassing. And a lot deadly."

* * *

"I just can't catch up, can I?" Azula asked darkly, sitting on the step that lead to the upper floors. Ked paced around the room, taking in whatever it was he would. "Six years. How could I be helpless for so long? I should have been back on my feet in a day!"

"Some wounds take a long time to heal," Ked said, pausing before the liquor cabinet, before idly opening the doors. He tsked in his disappointment at finding it empty. "Like those scars. There's an old injury there, one I don't think has fully healed even yet."

Azula raised one arm, letting the sleeve roll down it, showing the patchwork of old lacerations and tears across the forearm. "I might not be an anatomist, but I'm fairly sure these are about as healed as they are going to get."

Ked glanced over, then shook his head. "No, those aren't the ones I was talking about."

"You're marking a distinction?"

Ked nodded, then leaned down behind the cabinet and came up with a bottle of something which was covered in dust. He blew on it, sending a plume into the air. "Of course. It's the ones on your back that have me confused. The scars on your arms are obviously self-inflicted."

Azula stared at him. "What."

Ked came and sat beside her, the bottle between them. "Your wounds on your arms. You did them to yourself."

"I don't think so," Azula said with quite understandable doubt. She would have remembered doing... this... to herself. Since she was no masochist, she couldn't see any point in it, either. Unless there was something that required her to appear injured, or needed a great deal of blood. Or if it was the only way she could–

Don't go there. Not safe.

Ked reached over, pausing before touching her. Wise. "If you will indulge me?" he asked. She glared at him briefly, before sighing and allowing. He took one of her hands and maneuvered it around its opposite arm, dragging her fingers along the marks. She seemed to forget how to blink as she beheld; every scar started and ended at a spot she would have been able to reach. That was why there was a stripe with almost no furrowed tissue on it; it was the one place she wouldn't have been able to reach.

"This doesn't prove anything," Azula said, her voice steady, her mind anything but. Why couldn't she have figured that out on her own? She was supposed to be smarter than this. Much smarter. A genius. How could she be so blind? _Why hadn't she even noticed the scars_?

"It worries me," Ked said, still holding her hand. "Why would you do this to yourself. As far as I know, there's nothing pointing toward you being self-destructive. Quite the opposite. So why would you injure yourself?"

"It's your theory. You come up with an answer," Azula said snidely. But still, she felt like somebody was rattling at a door she wanted to remain closed, scratching at a wall she dared not even look at. And he was still holding her hand. She glared down at it for a long moment, before he finally got the clue and released her. He sighed, uncorking the bottle and sniffing at the neck.

"We all carry baggage with us, don't we?" Ked asked. He offered her the bottle, and she stared at him with a raised brow. He shrugged, and took a sip himself. "Hmm. Shoka. Azuli potatoes fermented," he offered the bottle again, and this time she took it. "You don't like people touching you. Why not?"

"It is a crime against my culture to have the unwashed masses touch my royal personage," Azula said haughtily, taking a sip of the Shoka. It burned, and she sputtered a bit, only on her second attempt getting it down.

"Perhaps," Ked said. "But I've heard that you reacted violently to physical contact. You fired all of your hairdressers and bathers nine years ago, doing all of the hygiene tasks yourself, which is highly irregular for a royal."

"Did you rummage through my underwear drawer as well?" Azula snapped. "You seem to have plumbed just about every other aspect of my life."

"I was trying to make you better," Ked answered, somewhat sharply himself. "And even then I still couldn't get a complete picture," he took a breath, and evened himself. "This started with your fifteenth birthday. From your thirteenth backward, you might have been a volatile young woman, but you had no issues with touch."

"Perhaps I learned what perversion lurks in the hearts of men, and sought to keep myself pure of it," Azula taunted.

"Or perhaps something happened in the two years where you vanished from all public record," Ked said quietly. She stared at him. "Do you remember what happened back then? You would have been thirteen, fourteen years old?"

Azula looked away. Black window.

"I see," Ked said quietly.

"Why do you even care?" Azula muttered.

"I protect people," Ked answered, his tone distant. "I have all of my life. I was five years old when I started pounding people into the ground for picking on my sister. Nobody accepted her because she looked different. A product of her mixed heritage. She never asked for my help, but I couldn't turn away," Ked rolled the bottle between his fingers for a moment, before taking a long pull himself. "I kept doing that until I was twelve. But then I stopped."

"Because you realized you were wasting your time, and that they would never stop abusing her," Azula said. Ked shook his head.

"Because Benell was never anything but a sweetheart," Ked corrected. He sighed. "I tried for years to get them all to fear me enough to leave her alone. But the whole time, she got them all to love her. She's everybody's little sister. And nobody would want to hurt her. And I just read it wrong the entire time. I think I have that same problem, even now."

"Who are you reading wrong?" Azula asked, remarkably with very little sarcasm or disdain. Ked glanced her way, then shook his head.

"Don't worry about it. It's in the past," Ked said. He looked back up at her for a moment, pondering. "You say you can't remember... What about your dreams?"

"I told you, I never remember my dreams," she lied.

"That might be for the best, but..." Ked took another swig of liquor. "Dreams aren't just the brain going off on a vacation. Sometimes, there are things which the conscious mind knows need to be addressed, but cannot bear to expose itself to in the waking hours. So it shoves them into the 'subconscious', the unaware mind. It shows itself in odd ways, reflexive reactions, unusual impressions, and as the basis for dreams. I don't even know what is so terrifying that your mind would give you nightmares like that."

"Like what?"

Ked was silent for a long time, and when he spoke, it was quiet. "You weep in your sleep. You cry like something is hurting you. For years, you had those dreams, and I was helpless to do anything about it. I thought maybe, just maybe, if I could figure out what was giving you those nightmares, I might be able to wake you up. But even after you woke up on your own, you still had them. Tui La, it made me feel so... helpless."

She stared at him. "You watched me as I slept?"

"Don't make it sound like that," Ked said. "The nurses were unsettled by it, too. There wasn't much I could do. Just keep you comfortable. And sometimes I'd... Ah, it doesn't matter. You wouldn't want that anyway."

"Use your magic water on my mind? I wasn't even aware waterbenders had that ability," she said idly. If they did, then why would it take him six years to get her upright? He answered that question when he spoke again.

"We don't. I just calmed some chaotic energy I felt in your mind. It calmed the dreams, I'm guessing, but it wouldn't do anything else. The last time I did it was when you were having that wicked nightmare in Jang Hui," Ked said. He continued talking, but instantly Azula's mind shot back to that night. The room with three windows, how she felt herself being pulled out of her dream and into that place where she could watch the dreams happen. The black window. Of course it didn't feel like a dream. The dream was the room. What she was seeing was memories, skewed through the lens of dreaming.

"That isn't possible," her double said, glaring with bloodshot eyes from where she leaned against a supporting pillar. "Your mother never loved you. She certainly never offered you support or kindness. She would never weep over you. And if I recall correctly, I strongly doubt you brought your brother back to life."

Azula glared at her opposite. Two facts, all other things being equal, the simpler one is most likely the correct one. Was it more likely that her mother hated her, and that her own mind was collapsing under an unknown and horrible strain that she could neither understand or repair, or was it more likely that her memories were fighting their way to the surface, that within those memories was what made her the person even Zuko was capable of casting down.

If her mind was collapsing, why did her dreams point to a happy childhood?

If her dreams were memories, why was she sure her mother hated her?

"Poor little Azula, lost and alone all over again," the daemon said, walking forward with swaying hip. As disturbing as it was to admit, the disheveled teenager was walking as though she were sex itself. "How long before he gives up on you, just like everybody else did? Like Mother did, like Father did, like Lo and Li did. And you'll be alone again. Like you know you deserve. Like any monster deserves."

"Stop calling me a monster!" Azula shouted, rising to her feet and casting a bolt of electric blue flame at that alter-ego. The fire tore through her as though she weren't there, and dispersed into smoke. She stood, heaving of chest, trying to blink away the dampness in her eyes. They _were not tears_, damn it!

Ked held his hands apart in a placating gesture. "Nobody's calling you a monster," he said carefully. But he had that look in his eyes. Fear. Good. She could control fear.

But did she want to?

Once again, she disregarded the errant thoughts sliding through her mind. They would do her no good. She was a monster. There was no doubt of that. She finally got her chest to stop heaving, her teeth to stop chattering despite the heat she felt flushing through her veins. "I have had... dreams," Azula said carefully. The Law of Parsimony. Simplest Solution. She would not lose control again. She would not become an animal again. "They are confusing. Sometimes... unsettling," she glanced away, swallowing her pride. "Sometimes... frightening."

"I see," was all Ked answered. She stared at him. What did he expect? Her to break down into tears and admit to a thousand crimes, weeping out her 'evil' onto the floorboards? She was evil. _Father_ left no doubt as to – where did that thought come from? She shook it away. After watching her for a few seconds, which oddly felt much longer, he rose, corking the bottle and sliding it into his satchel. "You have a lot on your mind. More than you can handle, at once anyway. You'll work through it, bit by bit. The mind is a remarkable, resilient thing, and yours is stronger than almost any I've ever encountered. But if you find yourself overwhelmed, just remember, I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere."

"You say that now."

"And I mean it," Ked said. He took a step toward her, and tilted his head a bit. "You look like you need a hug."

"Do it and _die_, Tribesman," Azula warned. Ked actually laughed at that.

"I'll take that under advisement."

* * *

Chan looked over the yacht; it wasn't large, but given the nature of its intended duties, it would more than suffice. Just a quick trip between the islands, heading to their eventual destination. 'Easy as an Azuli whore' as the saying went. He'd never been stupid enough to say it around an Azuli, though, despite his reputation for saying exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time. He quickly rechecked the supplies. Once again, not the fare that 'Fire Lord' Azula was used to, but the best he could procure on short notice. All he had to do was go out and find her and the erstwhile Tribesman, and they could be on their way.

Chan ignored the slight flapping sound he heard in the sky. After all, and lamentable in this case as it was, Chan was a firebender, not an airbender. Firebenders look to the horizon. Earthbenders look to the ground. Only airbenders looked to the sky. If he were one of the latter, it might have saved him, or at least given him a moment to dodge. As it was, Chan was caught totally by surprise when a pair of boots slammed into the side of his head, sending him unconscious to the deck plates. The owner of those aforementioned boots kept flying, skidding across the whole length of the ship, catching himself under the railing as the resilient lines leading up and toward the mushroom-like dome of silk overhead arrested him. He quickly pulled himself back onto the deck proper as the 'parachute' finally collapsed and drifted toward the water. Silently, he thanked his old friend and scientific compatriot for supplying him with a good idea, and quickly regathered the wet silk back up onto deck.

Sokka Baihu, mad Tribesman and inventor extraordinaire, noticed in the process that his right arm had come out of its socket again. He slammed it against the wheelhouse to pop it back in, swallowing a shout of pain as he did so. Oh, that old injury kept coming back to haunt him. After getting the parachute onto deck, he sauntered over to the center, looking down at the prone firebender. His luck couldn't have been better. Or rather, Chan's couldn't have been worse. But still, Sokka let out a sigh.

"Damn it all. Now I have to wait for you to wake up."

* * *

Ked halted in his step, watching the skies as it was said his kind never did. A mushroom like plume had opened in the sky, moving toward the ground. It was madness. Sheer and unadulterated insanity to employ something like that. He quickly opened his satchel and extracted a small magnifier, something he'd packed for the trip the Fire Nation so he would be able to see the interesting things his ship passed. Now, though, it showed him a man in dark blues and reds hanging underneath a ballooned bolt of fabric. And then slammed feet first into a man on a boat.

"_Oh, it just had to be you, didn't it?_" Ked muttered angrily. Azula, who had stopped two steps further, stared at him, obviously not catching his utterance, and besides which almost certainly not understanding Yqanuac. "Sokka is here. And there's a good chance he just took out Chan."

"Really?" Azula asked, a smile stretching across her face. "Then I think it's time to see how he works when he doesn't hold the element of surprise."

* * *

A snort of something extremely pungent worked its way up into the firebender's nostrils, and his eyes flickered open, bleary and unfocused. Sokka discarded the smelling salts and sat back, his foot tapping on the metal underfoot. A smirk was on his face, and he paused only to run a hand down his short beard before he began.

"So," Sokka said. "How's everybody's least favorite princess?"

"Go to hell, barbarian," Chan spat. He shook his head, and seemed unsteady in his seat, even though he was tied down to it.

"Been. Wouldn't recommend it. Sentient shadows, enormous wolves, no place to put a bathroom. Low real estate values," Sokka leaned forward. "Where is Azula?"

"Bite me."

"Don't tempt me, sir," Sokka flashed a murderous grin. And it was only half an act. "That woman killed a good friend of mine a few years back. She threw lightning bolts at my wife, and I'm fairly sure if I hadn't have been so wily, she would have had some very uncomfortable and perhaps salacious tortures lined up for me. That, and she's just too crazy to let walk."

"You won't get a word from me," Chan said.

"You see, that's where you're wrong," Sokka said. "I ask a question, you give me an answer. If you refuse to give me an answer, you will find yourself lacking something. First, it will be your comfort. Then, it will be your dignity. If you persist, it will become your limbs. The Tribesmen have a reputation. We pretty much never take prisoners. Why? Because that was the only way we could be merciful."

"Do your worst, barbarian," Chan said, defiantly, if a bit unsteadily. A concussion would do that to you. Sokka knew about that full well. He'd suffered a few in his day. Sokka sighed. He had hoped he wouldn't actually have to do anything. Torture was, all things considered, a terrible way of acquiring information. And the fear of torture always was more effective than any application of pain or discomfort.

Sokka rose, and moved a bit away from the man. Why would he do this? Azula didn't inspire any loyalty but through fear. Unless. Sokka turned back to the man. Was he loyal to _Ked_?

"I think I've got this backwards," Sokka said with a smile. "I've been asking the wrong questions. You won't talk about Azula? Fine. Then tell me all about Ked."

Chan gave a sour look, but with a sound of scuffing against metal, a twinkle came to his eye. A twinkle, and a smirk to his lips. Sokka got that feeling he always got when things were about to blow up in his face. He had learned a long time ago to not doubt that sensation, so he managed to dive out of the way of the horizontal pillar of azure flame which tore through the place he had been standing, and in fact the exterior wall of the wheelhouse, leaving molten metal to drip onto the ground. Sokka looked up. Smirking in that way only she could, Azula stood at the source of that destruction.

"Hello, Sokka," she said, her tones low and seductive. "Looking for me?"

"Across the breadth of the Fire Nation," Sokka answered, not even bothering to keep the snark out of his voice. "You know, it's an absolute pain in the ass to get an appointment with you. You might want to look into getting a better secretary."

That smirk shifted a bit, as Azula moved into a slightly different stance. "I think I'll be keeping the one I have, thank you very much," she responded, with equal sarcasm to he. Then, she lashed out, two fingers leading, as a bolt of fire the size of his head streaked out. Sokka dove aside, and it ate through the walls, only terminating against one of the main structural supports for the wheelhouse, and even then, made the gleaming steel red hot and slightly molten. Sokka took a flying dive through the first hole Azula had made, landing past the dripping metal on the deck. Azula quickly lashed out again, sending a wave of blue flame snaking across the deck, melting metal as it went. Sokka kept running, and leapt with all his might onto the deck of the next yacht on the pier.

Sokka looked back. Azula cast a hand toward the sagging metal of the deck and then cast that hand away, tearing all of the heat from the metal and hurling into the water; the water flash evaporated, and the metal flash hardened. Sokka reached behind him, running the numbers in his head as she advanced. It would take just one hit with the boomerang, and she would be...

Azula launched into an axe kick, and the wave of fire streaming off of it was the most malicious blue he had ever seen. It swept down like the Burning Sword of Tenger Etseg, God of Fire. And Sokka didn't like his chances against it. He sprinted perpendicular to that blade of conflagration, and hit the pier at a roll. Behind him, the fire slashed through the entirety of the vacant ship, stern to bow, bisecting it and sending it to the bottom of the dock in seconds.

"Son of a _bitch_!" Sokka muttered. If she was this powerful, how the hell was dorky, flash-bulb Zuko supposed to have beaten her? Ohhh. Flashbulb. There's an idea.

Azula was still at the wrong side of the wheelhouse, so Sokka turned. And was blasted onto his back by a surge of water. He could see dozens of others trying to clear out, so didn't do anything flashy. It's not like he had the strength to, regardless. His only aptitude, learned years ago on the Island of Kyoshi, was how to turn somebody's strength against them. He wasn't much of a bender, but he could do this.

Sokka forced a hand through the deluge, giving him enough room to breathe as he just diverted it enough so that it wouldn't ram its way into his face. It ended quickly, and Sokka kipped to his feet. Ked was right there, pulling water around himself in a band, nervously glancing toward the boat and back to Sokka.

"Why can't you just leave her alone?" Ked shouted.

"Why did you have to steal her?" Sokka answered. Heeding the call to do something stupid, quickly, Sokka hurled his boomerang at Ked. Ked ducked it, lashing forward with ice along the ground. Sokka leapt forward, drawing his blade and resting one foot on it as he skated through Ked's attack, rather than be trapped in it. "How about I prune your other hand?"

Sokka whipped his blade forward, but Ked reached out one hand, and flared, dire exertion plain on his face. Sokka could feel his hand open despite himself, and Piandao's blade clatter on the pavement. It wasn't bloodbending, but it was close enough. Sokka kept his momentum, and powered forward with a hard left hook to Ked's face, before catching the returning boomerang. The waterbender stumbled, and Sokka only had enough time to raise his favorite weapon, when he felt a shift in pressure. He looked up, and the air directly overhead looked odd, like he was staring through heat-waves. Sokka's eyes grew wide, and he bounded aside, just as a column of percussive force slammed straight down into the ground, making a crater, twice as tall as a man wide, and half as deep, where he had been standing a moment before and just shy of Ked.

Azula had left the boat, and was moving through a Kata Sokka recognized, even through the years, and doubly so for watching her brother use it. Lightning Kata. But strangely, no lightning danced from her fingertips. Still, no time to waste. Sokka dove back onto the ice Ked had left behind, grabbing his sword, and skidded directly to Azula's foot. A swing of the blade, not intended for lethal effect – because Zuko would never forgive if Sokka killed her – pulled her out of the Kata, and she lashed out with a boot to Sokka's face.

Sokka rolled back, and she began to surge through a dozen short, but unimaginably lethal bolts, which he dodged and wove around. When he saw his wife again, he was going to get Ty Lee the biggest chocolate cake ever made by human hands. Her instructions, both martial and marital, made the difference between a near miss and a missing torso. A thought shot through his head. How was he going to disable Azula without killing her? She didn't seem the sort to go down without a deadly fight.

That question was answered, albeit not in the manner Sokka wanted, when Sokka felt a loop of heavy chains pin one arm, his sword arm, to his side, and a meaty fist smash into his face. Chan was back up. Not hitting as hard as he could have, but still painful. Sokka backhanded low, striking him in the testicles. It seemed to be a recurring theme for their fights. Chan went down with a high-pitched squeal of pain, but Sokka hadn't even started to shrug out of the chains when a new torrent of brine covered him, head to foot, and froze solid. Sokka's eyes were trapped open, as he saw Azula lash out with a blast of fire.

* * *

The fire bolt smashed into the Tribesman, exploding the frozen form away and into the water. Wrapped as he was in heavy chains, he sunk rapidly. Azula stared after him as he went to the bottom, joining the ship she had destroyed trying to get him.

"He isn't dead," Azula said when Ked reached her side, about to speak. "Until I see his corpse, he isn't dead."

"_We don't have time_," Ked said in Tianxia. "_If he found us, others will be close. We need to leave now._"

"I think you might recognize that our vehicle is crippled?" Azula said, casting a thumb to the yacht where the fight began. Ked glanced past her, and nodded.

"_Be that as it may,_" Ked moved to Chan's side and helped him to his feet. "_We have to leave. Any boat heading east. We can get to Betla from wherever we end up._"

Azula looked at the water. Not so much as a bubble reached for the surface. But she wasn't convinced. Not by a half. She knew he would return to vex her again. "Very well. We've been in this slum too long as it is."

* * *

The room was quiet, and brightly lit, but empty of anything but two old men. Iroh sat quietly, drinking his tea, as the ancient king tried to awaken. King Bumi of Omashu was a remarkable specimen. Mad beyond compare, brilliant beyond calculation, and muscular beyond anatomical possibility. Well, he had been. The last few years had seen a steady decline in the supercentenarian, one which some politicians in Ba Sing Se, as well as every physician in the East Continent, said was about sixty years overdue. His muscular body, once able to withstand years of atrophy without faltering, withered, muscle vanishing into dust and air. What little hair he had left fell out, leaving him completely bald. The greener of his mismatched eyes developed a blinding cataract.

King Bumi of Omashu, Steward of the Throne of the Earth King, was dying.

"You're here," Bumi's voice had become impossibly reedy, whispers like the breeze through grass. "She was where you predicted?"

"Take it easy," Iroh said. "You have to preserve your strength."

"For what?" Bumi asked with a smirk. His craggy face hadn't changed much, but then again, it was the only part of him that looked like it belonged on a hundred twenty year old. Until recently, anyway. Iroh sighed.

"Yes, she was. The broken child slept in the house of the stolen evil," Iroh said. "She is... in better hands than I would have hoped. I had such expectations of her. She held such promise."

"What will be, will be," Bumi said. "Just do what you can."

"It is all I _can_ do," Iroh answered. "For years, these visions have guided my path, told me where I would need to be, and what would happen there if the world were to be made whole. It is almost over."

"Like a half-flipped waffle," Bumi confirmed with a nod.

"The fires will start soon," Iroh said sadly. "Another war. It is always war with my family. I only hope I will live long enough to see an age of peace before I die."

"Heh. Speak for yourself," Bumi chuckled, sounding something like flour being rubbed onto poor leather. Or something. However poetic Iroh was in his soul, he doubted there was a metaphor for what Bumi's snorting, wheezing laughter had become. "I couldn't even keep my home in order."

"We did the best we could," Iroh said.

Bumi nodded, and his mismatched eyes slid closed briefly. While closed, his face pursed up a bit. "What day is it?" Bumi asked.

"Thursday," Iroh answered his old, if somewhat mad, friend.

"Damn," Bumi muttered. "Gong won the bet. I was sure I would die on a Tuesday."

Iroh asked what that meant, but Bumi would not answer. Bumi would never answer anything ever again; his breath had stopped, and he grew still. Iroh let out a long sigh, and sat back, looking down on the Lotus who had helped him restore Ba Sing Se to freedom. Bumi was dead. And Iroh was running out of time.

"I will carry on, my friend," Iroh said. "There _will_ be an age of peace in this generation. I swear it."

* * *

Sokka's head burst up out of the water, drawing a few confused looks from the people diving to gather what they could from the sunken wreck Azula had created without thought, and more distressingly, without much effort. She wasn't just the most powerful bender of any one element, Azula had to be flat out the most powerful firebender alive, eclipsing even Aang. Sokka accepted a hand and was dragged to the docks, which had shown much less damage than the vessels which were supposed to be stronger than it.

"You must have been down there a long time, are you alright?" an amber-eyed, hard muscled woman, obviously a soldier off duty, asked.

"Fit as a pipa," Sokka said. He'd made a mistake. He let Azula get the initiative against him. He would not make that mistake again. And this time, he wouldn't bother bringing Zuko up to date. Ked and Azula were out there, and there was a score to settle between the two Tribesmen. He gave the woman a smile, and pulled himself to his feet. "Don't worry about me, I've been through worse."

"Are you sure?" she asked.

"Have you _seen_ my little sister on a bad day?" Sokka joked.

* * *

_Leave a review. Otherwise, I won't know where I'm screwing up._


	6. Love, Lost

**I'm starting to fall behind. Well, behind being a relative thing: Instead of being able to maintain a seven chapter buffer, when this one goes up, that'll have shrunk to six. What can I say? Chapter 13 is unlucky for me. Still, by the time this story get's put up, I'll be half way done of writing the story itself.**

**To address an extremely-in-depth review I got recently (good god, and I thought I put thought into this): The reason why Sokka seems to flit between rage and sane is because of a cultural condition called 'Blood-Drunkedness'. His is actually a very minor case, because he can snap out of it by his own volition, but it sneaks up on him, and can catch him unawares. It's sort of like a D&D Barbarian, but without having conscious control of when he enters his Rage. A full blown case of it is in Ked's uncle, Bato. They had to pin him to the ice for a week after the raid which resulted in Benell's conception so he wouldn't run off and get himself killed. The reason Sokka didn't mention it was because he found it frankly a little embarrassing. **

**W****hy everybody treats Azula like the enemy? Well, they haven't seen her since she woke up. They think she's still the psychopath who tried to murder Mai and Zuko (remember that?) and recommended to Ozai to burn the planet to ashes. Yeah, the people tend to get a little bull headed about her, but consider: If you knew somebody was hiding Charles Manson in their basement, would you be amenable to them telling you that he'd had a change of heart? **

**Regarding legitimacy: Officially, while Zuko is 'the bastard', he is claims descent from the legitimate Fire Lord, Iroh, since Ozai's supplanting him to become Fire Lord was illegal. That makes Azula more distant to the throne by an entire branch of the family tree than her brother. Ozai was never legally Fire Lord, so at the time of the Agni Kai, Zuko was second in line for the throne (after the deceased Lu Ten), and Azula, fourth. There is a ream of Fire Nation law which comes into effect, which will only be touched on briefly. But yes, the illegality of Ozai's rule is not a well known fact in the Fire Nation, and many, especially in Ember, still vastly favor a return to his style of rule. Since Zuko worked so hard to keep his sister's hospitalization quiet, her reappearance will be seen as nothing less than an Embiar miracle. **

**And as for Ked; he's on his own side, and he's not a Lotus. He recognized Iroh's seal on the tile, having dealt with the Dragon of the West before. He's not on a mission, save for the one which he claims to be: he wants to keep the people he cares about, safe. Long Feng threatened his sister's life if Ked betrayed him. Notably, neither Long Feng nor Jeong Jeong trust him, thinking that he must be planning something of his own. And as for his left hand: He reattached it. If he could reaffix an almost decapitated head, his own hand is child's play.**

**Yeesh. So much stuff. So much stuff that needs to unfurl in its proper time. **

**And now: a gratuitious fight sequence.**

_

* * *

_

_Smellerbee paced the length of her cell, rolling weary shoulders, swaying her balance on disused feet. She kept letting out little moans, as though the pain was purifying as she got used to standing upright again. Azula twirled the key ring, which was now short one key, around one finger as she watched the disenfranchised noble get used to walking once more._

_"You know what, you ain't as much of a bitch as people make you out to be," Bi said, before letting out a somewhat content sigh, and leaning against the back wall, not more than a pace from where she had been chained._

_"You wouldn't be the first murderous woman to say that about me," Azula remarked._

_"It's too much to hope that this key opens the door, isn't it?" Bi asked. Azula shook her head. "Ah, well. I'll take what I can get."_

_"If memory serves, you said you had a partner," Azula pressed. She was forcing the woman, she knew, and she actually had to make good on a promise to do it, but a part of her, one that Ked had showed her recently, demanded an answer. Craved it. "So what exactly happened there?"_

_"More than a partner," Bi said. "I had a whole gang. Well, Jet had the gang, I was just part of it. Then the Avatar shows up and we scatter to the wind. The little ones didn't agree with what Jet was doing. Neither did I, but I knew Jet. Have you ever known somebody, somebody glorious and incredible, but unspeakably dangerous? Like a force of nature, something that will go completely out of control if it doesn't have somebody to stop him?"_

_"Of course I do," Azula said, flatly. Herself._

_"Then you'd know what it was like being around Jet. I would follow that man into the blood seas of Hell, if he asked me," she let out a small, bitter laugh. "That was young love. Ain't it grand. Then he got... focused. On your brother. It consumed him. He wanted to hurt the firebender the way that firebenders hurt him. It burned up his mind and left him... It put him into Long Feng's hands. And that's why he died. Because he refused to be a puppet. After that, it was just me and Shot. We kept fighting, for a long damned time. But then, five years ago, he tells me that he can't keep fighting anymore. That he's worn out. That he just needs to stop. I knew I could have kept him with me, had him fight beside me, but I saw that look in his eyes. He was looking for the fight which would kill him. And if I kept him next to me, he'd find it. So I let him go. It was the only mercy I could give him."_

_"So you pushed people away to protect them from you?" Azula asked. For just an instant, the dour face of an Azuli girl, and the bright effervescent grin of an Embiar intruded in Azula's mind. Before she shoved them aside. She simply said. "I know the feeling."_

_"Yeah. So, I've answered your question, so now time for turnabout. Have you snapped off a piece of the Tribesman yet?"_

_"What?" Ked asked, incredulously._

_"Please, I've seen better," Azula said. Ked was fairly attractive, but Tribesmen tended to do far better than he. Even Sokka, crazed killer though he seemed to be, was about three points higher than Ked. She put on a smirk, and walked her fingers up his arm. "Although, I have to admit, the thought does have its appeal."_

_"...You do realize I'm sitting right here," Ked said, blushing deeply. She laughed at his embarrassment._

_"Was that your question?" Azula asked._

_"No, not really. I was just messing with blubber-eater over there," Bi answered. "What are you planning? You seem smug as a pig-cow in shit, so you must have something up your sleeve."_

_"And why should you get to hear?" Azula asked._

_"So that you can be smug?" Bi offered. "Come on, it's not like I'm going to tell anybody. You want Long Feng to step on his own dick as much as I do. Nah, less, but you still want him to step on his own dick, so that makes us buddies, as I see it."_

_Azula gave a glance to Ked, who made a terminating gesture. "We're going after my father," Azula said. Ked groaned. "Amongst other targets. But it won't end the way that they expect. They want me to be a puppet? I'll show the world just how little I appreciate being strung. What is it?" she demanded of the Tribesman_.

"You have to see how much badness this will bring down on us," _Ked hissed in Tianxia_.

"You do realize I speak Tianxia?" _Bi asked. Ked grumbled angrily to himself in his own tongue._

_"You've given me my lightning back, and I appreciate that," Azula said coyly, patting Ked on the cheek, "but don't think for a second you're getting in the way of my destiny."_

_"If your destiny gets you killed," Ked began, rising to his feet. He shook his head. "Just be careful, alright. This is the only chance we have."_

_"We?"_

_"You know what I mean," Ked said. He turned to the woman in the cell. "I hope things improve. All things considered, I think you deserve better than what you've gotten."_

_"Aw, how sweet. Maybe you can be a character witness in my trial. If they bother giving me one," Smellerbee sat down in the opposite corner. "Go, have fun storming the Fire Nation."_

_"Oh, believe me, I will. It will be my moment of triumph."_

_Azula grinned then, the superior grin of somebody who knows she's going to win. But as she turned to leave the room, she heard Ked's utterance. "Tui La, this is going to end so badly. I can just feel it."_

* * *

**Chapter 6: Love, Lost**

* * *

The ground shook under her feet, and she was off at a run again. Her hair stuck to her sweat-covered forehead. Her clothes clung to her skin. Her legs burned, her arms as well. She was in the fight of her life against the closest opponent she had ever come across to her own level of mastery. She actually had doubts as to who would win. It was brutal, and it was glorious.

She stopped, listening. Her opponent was good. She just had to be better, then. The sound of laughter, ringing through the rock around her. She schooled her breath down, calling with it her heartbeat, and let everything drain away. She was tired, but she needed absolute calm. She needed focus. She felt rumbling again, coming directly toward her. Of course it would. There was no hiding from this one. But luckily, Azula didn't have a tendency to hide. She set her foot where the stone began to erupt up, and used the momentum it offered to spring into the air, lashing out with a broad circuit of flame. It scoured the ground, forcing the foe to bring up a shield.

Azula landed, flicking her head up a moment later, thumbing one bang away from where it had fallen in front of her eye. She heard slow clapping, as the stone shield dropped, and the short earthbender, looking more a girl than the twenty one year old Azula knew she was, came out. The hands she clapped were covered in old burns from fingertip to elbow, and wrapped 'round with the remnants of heavy iron chains. Her eyes were an irregular, milky green. "Nice trick, Crazy Bitch," the woman said. "But I'm the best goddamned earthbender on this planet. You'll have to do better."

And with that, Toph Beifong attacked.

* * *

_Earlier that day._

Chan flinched as the naginata embedded itself with a brutally loud thunk into a wooden support beam, about a hand's-breadth below a similar, albeit aged, wound. He glanced around sheepishly, but Azula could tell that the proprietor was still fast asleep. It actually astounded her how a man could sleep through the sort of messing about that Chan was doing, doubly so because this place purported to have the finest weapons in Ember.

"He is like a child," Azula muttered.

"You should try to take a bit of enjoyment while you can," Ked said, idly flipping through a tome he'd picked up from the docks. "Once we reach Betla, there won't be any time for it."

"I don't need _fun_. I need everybody to hurry up," Azula muttered.

"You wouldn't rush into battle unprepared, would you?" he asked. She shot him a look. "I didn't think so. Just relax. The boat to Betla will come soon enough. There is no point stressing about it, especially when there's nothing you could do about it anyway."

"The faster we get to Betla, the better we will be."

"Not even by a half," Ked muttered. "Your little show at Hachiman is making it very hard to make people believe you're helpless," he made a placating motion as she prepared to speak, "because as you no doubt recall that's why we're traveling so quietly. To keep Long Feng and Jeong Jeong in the dark."

Azula frowned. "You have a point," she whispered. She dared not say it louder.

Chan was slinking away from the weapon-seller, glancing about as though somebody were about to ambush him. Nobody would. These people were much like the people in Hachiman, only without the same level of industry, which was just sad. Ked marked his place in the tome and looked over the city briefly, before turning to Azula.

"You've been having bad dreams again, haven't you?" he asked. She turned to him suspiciously.

"Have you been watching me as I sleep?"

"Waterbender," he said with a shrug. "I tend to stay up late. And besides, it seemed to really be bothering you."

She scowled. "I have nightmares. Who doesn't? That doesn't mean they need to be dissected," she said.

"By your word, you're not given to flights of fancy. Your mind might be trying to tell you something. It might do well to explore your dream, next time you get a chance to," Ked said.

"Dreams don't allow for careful inspection."

"Oh, there are ways," Ked said, as Chan reached them. With entirely too wide a grin, he asked. "Did you find anything you liked in there?"

"No, but I... Shut up!" Chan snapped. Ked laughed. Azula laughed as well. Seeing the firebender flustered made the whole thing seem like it was some mad joke. It made her think back to the last time the gang was still together, with she, Ty Lee and Mai alone in the East Continent. It felt like a lifetime ago. In a way it was. That was when she still had friends.

"What about the boat to Betla?" Ked asked.

"Coming later this afternoon," Chan answered as the trio moved further into the outskirts of town. The crowds were already dissolving to practically nothing. "And we're damned lucky. They only do that circuit once a fortnight."

"Don't even call us lucky," Ked said, making a gesture which probably had some religious connotation Azula didn't care about. "Doing that just begs for the universe to make our lives miserable."

"You're being superstitious. Nothing can possibly go wroooough!" Chan was cut off when the ground dropped out from under him, then snapped closed around his shoulders. Ked instinctively leaped to the side, and for his troubles, was buried to his neck where he landed. Azula dropped into a firebending Kata, glaring around her for the inevitable follow-up. What she got, though, was the sound of clattering metal, as one small figure leaned against the edge of a building, grinning wide.

"Well ain't this just lovely?" she asked.

* * *

Toph accounted herself a very good judge of character. Partially because she adopted a blunt-honesty policy which pleased some and discomforted others; the latter tended to be squirrelly, and she avoided doing business with them. Partially it was because even with her reputation, people saw a blind woman who looked like an underdeveloped teenager and they made assumptions. Assumptions which always, of course, fell short. And admittedly, it was partially because her earthbending let her know whenever somebody was a lying bastard. So yes, she was a good judge of character.

So how she managed to get screwed out of this deal, she couldn't quite imagine. She never expected, not in a million years that she'd end up being scooped by one of her old protégées. It would have been hurtful, if Toph were the type to allow petty backstabbing to hurt her feelings. It was times like this where she was glad she was quantifiably more manly than womanish, because instead of getting upset, she got angry. She was seething at a low boil, walking through the streets of Chuo Yan. She used to go home and vent to her husband, but with Huang around... well, she didn't want her son's first word to be 'douchebag' so she had to find other releases. Mainly that meant long walks, cold baths, and massive collateral damage. Gods, she hadn't even had a good fight in years.

"Alright, Toph, not the end of the world, just a pain in the ass," she told herself, cracking knuckles, elbows, and shoulders before picking a random direction and heading down it. Unconsciously, she was heading away from the noise and the bustle of town. Into the country. Where it was quiet. Man, it had been so long since she was here? Would it kill them to throw a little hero-worship her way? She did once save the town, after all...

She was in the midst of brooding her dark, admittedly egocentric thoughts, when she recognized something. A familiar voice, an unmistakable cadence of words and tones, that sing-song quality, even if the voice had changed. A small part of her told her to get Teo and fly to Grand Fire fast as the sky bison could haul. Needless to say, that part was _very_ small. The greater voice, that which Toph actually heeded, told her that she was _long _overdue for that rematch.

Toph tapped her foot, and instantly found what she was looking for. A block and tackle lay in a disused smithy. She smirked as she pulled the chain off, wrapping it around her forearms and across her back. She would have preferred the chain she had invented her unique power on, but that was with her husband and her child. And it was terribly rusty. Still, a chain's a chain. She moved through the alleys, seeing with her feet, hearing with her ears, of course. There she was. And there were two others with her. One of them was bulky, heavy-set. An earthbender maybe? The other was of a more average build. It had took her until she really started getting serious with Teo that she realized that not all men looked like Sokka. Which was kind of a let-down, when she considered it. Regardless, this wasn't about them, nor specifically about those two with her.

"You're being superstitious," the big one said. "Nothing can possibly go wr–"

Toph decided that there could be no more perfect moment. A stomp of her foot saw him drop into a pit of her making, buried to the neck. Only the best could earthbend without being able to move their hands or feet. The other one was nimble, leaping away. Still, when he landed, she buried him too. She took a few steps out of the alley and leaned against the face of the building. "Well, ain't this just lovely?" she asked. "And here I thought I'd never get another crack at the Crazy Bitch."

The deposed Fire Lord herself, former Princess, firebender extraordinaire, and all around unpleasant person Azula was in a low stance, waiting. She tilted her head to the side for a moment. "I'm sorry, was I supposed to remember you?" she asked acidicly.

"Oh, that's just hurting my feelings," Toph said sarcastically. The smaller of the two men's heartbeat spiked much higher, to the point where he was about to give himself a stroke.

"Tui La, they've found us," he muttered.

"_I_ found you," Toph clarified. "So, what are you doing out of the wacky-shack?"

"I was falsely imprisoned," Azula muttered darkly.

"Nah, you were all _full up_ of crazy the one time I visited. Sugarqueen never listened to me, always thought you'd get better and be nice and junk," she shook he head with a smirk. "But we both know you don't do nice, do you, Crazy Bitch?"

"Stop calling me that!" Azula shouted. She wasn't the Azula which Toph fought on the road from Shr-Wa. This was the Azula from the Day of Black Sun. In the self-control department, she wasn't doing so well.

"The last time we tangled, you ran off on me. Are you so afraid of having an honest rematch?"

"Are you so willing to die?" Azula asked.

"What can I say? Things haven't been that interesting lately. I could do with a stir-up," she said. Despite the obvious problems associated with being blind, and therefore being utterly incapable of picking out expressions, Toph could somehow still 'see' that Azula's expression pulled into a smirk. Toph turned her arms in front of her. "Besides, you still owe me an apology for almost burning my damned arms off."

"I owe you nothing," Azula responded, rising from her stance to fiddle with her fingernails. "You insulted me, then attempted to murder me without any provocation on my part. I would have been completely in my rights to put you down like a rabid beast," Azula let a pause linger. "You should count yourself blessed I only destroyed your skin, and not something more irreplaceable."

"Alright, you wanna tangle, Crazy Bitch?" Toph shouted.

"Make the first move. I promise you, I'll make the last," Azula answered. Toph grinned, then stopped one foot. A spike of stone lashed up from the ground, but Azula nimbly ducked under it, before lashing forward with a broad bolt of brutally hot flame. She quickly swept out her chains, transfiguring them into a broad shield which parted the flame, then snapping them into wire which she lashed out with as a molten whip.

Azula bounded away, landing with a grunt and another blast of pressure, shattering the wire out of Toph's control, then sweeping low, coating the ground between them with flame. Toph retorted by slamming a fist into the ground, raising up the sandy clay and separating one from the other. The sand snatched up the heat from the flames, killing it before it reached her, falling to the ground as a shower of tiny glass beads. "You're gonna have to do better than that," Toph pointed out. Azula... well, Toph guessed she was glaring, because without a word, she abandoned her companions and pelted up the street. Toph knew she wasn't running away. Just finding better ground. So with a smile on her face, the blind earthbender followed her out of the town and into the wilderness.

"Lovely lady you're workin' for," Toph said to the smaller of the two as she walked past him.

"She's had a very trying week," he answered with a remarkable amount of calm. Well, any calm, to be honest. She idly shoved his head a bit with one callused foot.

"Well, we'll see if she comes back in one piece. I've been waiting for this for six goddamned years."

"Then you _really_ need to get laid," the big one answered. Toph stopped, eschewing turning to stare at him because she didn't exactly have vision. Then, she started to laugh. Uproariously.

"Who'd've figured that come around and bite me in the ass?" she asked, before following the firebending bitch from hell.

* * *

Gong drew the whetstone across his blade. It needed to be very sharp for its purpose. Anything less would be unforgivably sloppy, and might end very badly for him. He ran a thumb along its edge, satisfied for the moment that it was up to the task, a blade capable of slicing through sinew and bone with ease.

Of course, this blade only had to deal with bread, but that was no excuse to be neglectful. A single motion split the loaf of bread in half, laying one half aside as he sat in the early morning of Omashu. The greatest part of the task was preparing the bottom. With speed born of twenty years of experience, only broken up by three years of distraction, he quickly loaded the bottom half with cabbage, meat, lettuce, tomatoes, and a thin sauce rife with Fire Nation peppers. It was a popular confection which had reached across the ocean. Gong looked at the sandwich his hands had created, inspecting it for flaws, for unevenness, for poor presentation. It passed muster. He set it beside a dozen others, each as perfect as the last.

Gong wasn't considered the finest sandwichmaker in Omashu for nothing.

The last years of the Weary War had been hard on him. He'd had to fight, for the first time in his life. His knives stained with blood, not myoglobin. It wasn't pleasant, but it was his duty to his city and his people. And his reward? To slip back where he wanted to be. Belatedly, of course. A knocking came at his door. He picked up a new loaf and leaned over past it. Barely passed sunrise.

"We open in an hour. You can wait," Gong called out. Once more, he split the loaf, setting the top aside.

"Open in the name of King Bumi," the voice on the other side spoke up. Gong frowned, setting aside his work and moving to the door. He swept aside the curtain, and beheld a man in the green and brown livery of the Ruler of Omashu standing outside, flanked by a royal guard. This was the Herald of the King. This was the Voice of Omashu.

"Tell them we open in an hour," Gong's wife's voice came from the upper story, sounding justifiably annoyed, and at least half asleep. But Gong was of Omashu. He unlocked the door and threw it open, standing in his pristine apron before the representative of the Crown.

"What business do you have at my shop so early?" Gong asked, impatient.

"Sign this," the Voice of Omashu said, thrusting forth a document. Gong looked the thing top to bottom, but it might as well be written in Huojian for all he was able to understand it. "Please, sir, we haven't got all day."

"Fine," Gong said, taking the offered stylus and scratching his name onto the scroll. The Voice turned to one of the soldiers with him, and Gong, finally getting his head in the game, recognized him as an emissary from the recently reconstituted city of Gaoling. "What is he...?"

"Witnessed and signed," the representative from Gaoling said, scratching his own name onto the paper. "If that is all, I shall retire until a more respectable hour."

"What was this all about?" Gong asked, growing more confused by the moment. The Voice turned to him, and nodded briefly. "And why did you need...?"

"This belongs to you," the Voice interrupted, handing Gong something that Gong by rights should never be allowed within a hundred paces of. It was fairly small, life-sized to be honest, a gold and jade figurine of a squirrel wolf. It was one of the most psychotically brave members of the animal kingdom, willing to attack predators a dozen times its size to drive them away from its burrows. It was also the royal animal, and thus the royal symbol, of Omashu. It belonged to the King.

"I don't understand," Gong said, very delicately holding the Royal Seal.

"Bumi had no sons nor daughters, nor any surviving kin for whom the kingship would default," the Voice explained, as though he had somewhere else he would much rather be. "Thus, he decided upon the restoration of Omashu that _you_ be designated his heir in the event of his demise. His death in Ba Sing Se has prompted us to carry out his final wishes. You are now King of Omashu."

Gong stared at the Voice, who, according to his own words, was now Gong's faithful servant. The stare grew long. "Me?" he asked. The Voice nodded. "The King of Omashu?" the Voice nodded again. Gong nodded slowly. "I see... WAS HE OUT OF HIS GODDAMNED MIND?"

The Voice shrugged. "That is the most commonly held belief of the man," he said. "Your servants will be by in a few hours to relocate your possessions to the Royal Palace. Long Live the King."

The Voice offered a brief bow, then moved away, bringing the guard with him. Leaving the Royal Seal in Gong's hands. He pondered briefly that this could all be part of some elaborate joke. But then he realized the only person capable of pulling that joke off that Gong knew about was Bumi himself. Gong stepped back inside, locking the door behind him. He gently set down the Royal Seal in the center of his display table. Then, on perfect cue, the madness of this morning shut his brain off, and he fainted dead away onto the floor.

* * *

The jarring impact threw Azula through the air, sending her skidding through the mud. As if it weren't embarrassing enough to have to fight a blind girl, she now had to do it covered in filth. The wind had picked up slightly, but that didn't bother her in the slightest. She quickly rolled to her feet, setting herself carefully in the muck near the pond in the hills. Her decision to leave the town had definitely been the right one; the lack of line of sight meant nothing to the earthbender, but to Azula, it would have been crippling.

The Earthbender popped up out of that muck a short distance away, grinning wide despite her being covered head to toe in foetor. The land here was a swamp, boggy land and unsteady footing. She didn't seem to care in the slightest. Azula remained still, watching her.

"Oh, Cra-a-azy Bitch? Where are you hiding?" the girl taunted. Which was odd, because Azula was standing right in front of her. A ways off, but in easy eyeshot... right. Blind. Smirking for her opportunity, she moved her arms through that practiced, deliberate motion, those long sweeping circles, as the energy was pulled apart inside her. But lightning didn't follow her fingertips. As she thrust forward, she felt the slightest hitch, a hesitancy starting right down in her soul and reaching up into her pool of Chi. And then there was an explosion.

She was hurled backwards as the shockwave took her off of her feet, the backlash hurling her a dozen paces before slamming her down into the mud at the edge of the water. She lay there for a moment, trying to shake the daze out of her mind. What just happened? There was a triumphant laugh, and something which sounded like 'oh, there you are', and a rumbling approached.

Lightning wasn't working. This was the second time she'd done that and had it backfire on her. No. That wasn't true. It was the fourth. The first time was so long ago, not nearly as devastating. But the second time was... when Mai turned against her. She lost control of her lightning because... because she was alone? She scanned her teachings about the cold-blooded fire but couldn't find anything about attachments or emotionality. Only the Kata, the flow of energy. The necessity for strict control. What if there was something that nobody taught her? What if Jeong Jeong had _lied_ to her? It wouldn't be the first time. Much as she hated having to bring _feelings_ into this, there had to be some explanation for why she kept failing. But now was hardly the time to ponder it. She spun her feet, roughly and inefficiently imitating her brother's surprising move which broke her stance during the Agni Kai. It wasn't nearly so effective against the earthbender, but it made her halt briefly as she pulled up a block of soggy ground to deflect the blast. The clay was effectively fired when it was returned to the ground.

She lashed out again, a ripple of stone which Azula could have easily avoided if the footing weren't so horrible. As it was, she only managed to make it half way to where she needed to be do leap over when her foot went wide, and she was swept up and hurled bodily in to the lake. Animal panic blasted through her mind for the moment it took to get her cognition back in control. Water. She hated water. She could barely swim; when Iroh threw her off her boat on Bakemano Island, she almost drowned. That would have been a most ignominious death for her. Training trumped instinct, and she began to flail in the water not randomly and helplessly, but with a measure of control, purpose. Her head came back up above the water, the filth mercifully washed away, as she sputtered and took her breath. It felt _very_ good to breathe.

The earthbender was standing at the shore, sweeping her gaze, such as it was, across the wind-rippled waters. "Come on out. I ain't goin' in there to get you," she shouted. Azula scowled. Wait. That was the answer. She cast her mind back, to every encounter she ever had with this woman. The road from Shr-Wa. The Drill. The Day of Black Sun. Her feet. She saw with her feet, possibly by sensing vibrations in the ground. When the ground was loose, or absent, she was as good as blind. Oh, how could Azula have been so ignorant? How could she not have figured this out in minutes? She was supposed to be smarter than this! All she had to do was...

Azula held her breath for a moment, letting herself sink into the water as she righted herself. Then, with a blast of heat and pressure, the water seared to boiling around her hands and feet. It would be agony for a while until Ked healed them, but when the pressure shot her upward, into the sky, it was worth it. Free of the water. Free of drowning. And invisible to the blind woman below.

"Oh, that's cheating," she muttered angrily. Azula didn't care. She powered toward the woman, blasting forward with searing bolts of flame, aimed low, at the earthbender's feet. She reacted as Azula predicted, panickedly protecting her bare feet as she was driven back, slowly but inexorably. Finally, the same muck which had been the downfall of Azula's footing proved to be the downfall of hers. The underdeveloped earthbender slipped and fell onto her back, and Azula slammed down into the mud atop her, one fist leveled down directly at the blind woman's face. Blue flame played over Azula's knuckles.

"This is over. You lose," Azula said. The earthbender sighed, then grinned again.

"Yeah, but it was the best fight I've had in a long time," she said. Azula stared at her. "Don't be a bitch. Help me up."

"Why?"

"You won, I lost. That's the way it goes sometimes," Toph Beifong said with a shrug in the mud. Azula stared at her. A voice was telling her to kill the woman, but there was that flinching away inside her. She knew she couldn't. That for some reason it wasn't right. Azula stepped back, but kept a wary eye on her. "Fine, then," she said, righting herself. She slammed her hand into her fist, and all of the muck leapt off of her and onto the ground around her. Oh, that was distinctly unfair.

"You do realize what happens to losers of Agni Kai, don't you?" Azula asked.

"This wasn't an Agni Kai," Toph answered with a grin. "You might have noticed that I'm not a firebender. You need to be a firebender to have an Agni Kai. This was just the rematch which was long overdue."

"You're going to tell the Avatar about me, aren't you?"

"Nah," Toph said with a dismissive wave. "Twinkletoes has got enough troubles back East. He hears about you, he gets all panicky, comes to do something about you, then my homeland goes to shit."

"So... you're not going to," Azula said.

"Why would I?" Toph slugged Azula in the arm as she walked by, causing the latter to immediately take a combative posture again. "Oh, you really need to loosen up. Get a man, get laid. Trust me, it's a hell of a stress release."

"You are a bizarre creature," Azula said.

"Yeah, I get that a lot," Toph said with a shrug. And a sigh. "And here I thought I'd hold of on losing my badassness for a while. Kids really take it out of ya'."

Azula glared at her. "Children? You have children and you didn't even bother to beg for your life when it looked like I was about to kill you?" she asked.

"You weren't going to kill me," Toph dismissed. "Besides, if I'd said something, you might have gone easy on me, and I wanted an honest fight."

"...You're out of your mind."

"Nope. Just looking for a good scrap," she said. She grinned, deliberately casting it over her shoulder for Azula's 'benefit'. "And you know what, I dare say you've inspired me. I think I'm gonna saunter home and get some shit in order. We should do this again sometime. The meeting, not the wanton destruction of property and landscape."

"Why would I want to do that?" Azula demanded.

"Because I recognize a fellow badass when I see one. You know, when you're not trying to kill me, y'ain't that much of a bitch," she said. She turned back toward the town. "Who knows? Maybe next time we tangle, you'll earn a better nickname."

The blind earthbender happily walked away, humming a jauntier version of an East Continent lullaby, as Azula stood in mud that caked up to her thighs, and stared after her. Her hair, in wet and wild disarray, hung around her face. "They must be right," Azula said to nobody in particular. "I _am_ out of my mind. Otherwise my life is too bizarre to explain."

* * *

The first thought she had upon returning to her mobile domicile was something to the tune of 'Gods damn it all, Huang has colic again'. The distinct, unmistakable, and frankly a little blinding screams tore through the vessel with alarming regularity and frequency. Needless to say, she didn't waste time entering the nursery. Between moments of synesthetic blindness brought forth by the very loud child she had bore, she could 'see' her husband looking all manner of worried, trying to rock some calm into the infant.

"I think Huang has..."

"Colic? I guessed as much," Toph said, relieving her other half of the child. He slumped even further into his seat, only possible because he'd taken off his false legs. He let out a low groan.

"Remember when we _wanted_ to stay up late?" Teo asked.

"Vaguely, but then again, my memory isn't at its best right now," Toph said, doing her best to not spur Huang into yet louder crying. If there was one good thing she inherited from her mother, it was her ability to put up with a rock-stubborn child. Teo leaned forward, elbows on knees.

"I heard that commotion outside town. What happened?" Teo asked.

"I got into an all-out mud-fight with Fire Lord Azula. Pity nobody ever told her; firebenders might fight dirty, but earthbenders fight with dirt."

There was a long moment of silence, where even _Huang _seemed confused by that statement.

"Did that really happen?"

"What do you think, Flyboy?"

Teo sighed. "Right. Bar fight it is," he said. He reached over and began fitting his legs back on. "Are we leaving tonight?"

"Nah, we've got plenty of time," Toph said, a content smile pulling across her face. "For once, we're on our own."

* * *

Ked lay awake, staring out the window. He had already prayed tonight, and Yue, as always she was, remained silent to him. That was the definition of faith, to believe that sooner or later, his Goddess would answer him. Of course, the definition of madness was to do the same thing over and over and expect different results. He frowned as he considered whether religion was fundamentally insane, but decided that it was a topic better suited for conversation over wine with pompous people getting paid entirely too much money to sit around doing nothing. Besides, if faith was mad, then so was Ked.

With a groan, he sat up, matching his sway to that of the ship. They had left for the boat immediately after Azula returned, covered in mud and with a very unpleasant look on her face. Both he and Chan instantly knew better than to utter one word in her presence. Not at first. Now, they were on their way to Betla. Everything was coming to a close. Soon, she'd be back on her way, he would be cast aside, and the whole business would be _over_. In a way, it was a distinct relief. In another way, it left him feeling hollow. He couldn't save her.

Ked got up, and decided to have a good pace around the ship in the moonlight. Yue's face was gibbous, swelling toward fullness. He breathed deeply, feeling the energy swirling around him, amplified by the tidal force of the moon. No matter how often he felt this, it was always fresh. Always vibrant. Waterbending was a part of who he was, and the moon felt as natural as his own beating heart. He exited the wheelhouse, standing dark and grim against the night. This was an old warship, decommissioned and dropped into the merchant fleet. It wasn't comfortable. It wasn't pretty. But it was heading to Betla. He looked to the south, where one of his messages was probably being read by his sister at this very moment. In time, she would show it to Pakku, as she was wont to do. Then, everybody would know. And there would be a chance.

He kept walking, around the circuit of the rail, until he found something in his path. Long black hair drifted lightly in the breeze, and golden eyes stared at the water from where she was leaning against that rail. Bitterly. "I didn't expect to see you up," Ked said to Azula. She cast a glance in his direction, then let out a sigh. Everything about her screamed fatigue.

"I don't like to sleep," she said simply.

"Why not?"

"Because I no longer know what I'm getting," she said, her gaze hardening. "Before, I knew. There wasn't anything I could do about it, but I knew what to expect. Now... I'm never sure. I hate being unsure. It grates. It infuriates. And there's still nothing I can do about it," she lowered her forehead to the rail, and her words dropped to a whisper. "I don't want to be out of control anymore. I need to be better than that."

"Why?"

"Because that's the only way anybody..." Azula cut herself off. "You wouldn't understand. You were a peasant. Nobody expected anything out of you," Ked was mildly offended at that. "But me? I had to be _perfect_. Nothing less was good enough. And I... I couldn't do it. Agni's blood, I tried. But I'm _just not good enough_. Never good enough."

"Sometimes you just have to accept yourself as you are," Ked said. She let out a snort.

"Ah. I knew this was pointless. I might as well have been talking to the idiot," she muttered quietly.

"Why do you push people away?" Ked asked, cutting to the heart of what he had seen. She stopped, staring at him.

"What are you talking about?"

"Everybody you interact with, you distance. You insult and belittle everybody. It's almost as though you're afraid to meaningfully interact with _anybody_," Ked turned his back to the rail, and began to gesture. "It's like the boarquepine during estrus. If they want to find a mate, they have to let another of their kind close to them, but if they do that, then they stand the risk of being jabbed by those same quills that they themselves possess. People are the same way. The closer people get to us, the more they're able to hurt us."

"So why bother at all?"

"Because a life lived alone isn't much of a life at all," Ked said. He waited for her vehement denial, her denigration, possibly even an ethnic slur, but she just turned away from him, back to the water. Silence stretched. "We've been on the water a while," he said. She smirked.

"The Fire Nation always found its way to the sea," she said, distractedly. "It was ours to conquer. Even though we had nothing to control it, even though it fought against our element at every turn, we still felt that drag, away from the shore, toward the horizon. We almost ruled the entire planet, because we had taken the elements that turned against us and made them kneel. It was not the armies which brought victory to our Nation. It was our navies. The Fire Nation ruled the seas," she let out a low, tired laugh. "Ironic. The path to Fire Nation supremacy lies in dominating water."

Ked nodded. "I understand completely," he said. "Our pantheon was once a triumvirate of gods. Two which guided our lives, Tui and La. Pull and push, gods of sea and moon. One of them, even more important, was the one who let us live at all. Tenger Etseg, God of Fire. There is a word in our language, a word which has religious connotations. _Hareq_. The closest word to it in your language is 'burn'. Before Yue's ascension, fire was our strongest gift from divinity, and 'burn' our holiest word. So yes. I understand completely the irony of being a child of water, but reverent to the flame."

Azula gave him a glance, then back out to the water. "Religion. Pah."

"I understand that, too."

Silence stretched. Finally, she turned from the rail. "I've had enough pointless introspection for one night. Nothing good ever comes from looking inward. It's just pointless navel gazing," she said.

"You know, I could help," Ked offered. She stared at him flatly. "You said you had nightmares. I think that there's something your dreams want you to see, but doesn't know how to show you. Maybe if I help, you'll be able to figure out what your mind is telling you?"

"You don't have the power."

"No, but I have the skill," Ked said. "Learning to heal opened the back door to a lot of abilities that people like Master Katara think are the sole province of the strong. I have the skill. You have the mind. If you let me, I can help you find the answers you're looking for."

"That was very distinctly said," she said, suspiciously.

"I like to believe I know how you think," Ked said. Azula looked away, then her shoulders slumped just a little bit.

"Answers. Those will stop the nightmares, correct?"

"I cannot say. It won't make them worse," Ked lied, since he really had no idea. Dreams were a shaman's playground, not his.

"Fine. But if you do anything perverted to me while I'm asleep, I swear to whatever heathen god you worship that your people will find you scattered across the Straits of Kirin," Azula said, doing her damnedest to be intimidating. Even though Ked expected it, it still made him swallow out of knee-jerk nervousness. He followed her up to the room where she was sleeping, slipping in without a word. Chan was in the room opposite her, the door wide open, just in case, so he claimed. He was also completely asleep.

Azula laid on the bed like a log. She stared upward, a very focused look on her face. "Alright. How does this work?"

"You go to sleep," Ked said. She glared at him. "One thing at a time. First you sleep, then you dream. When you dream, I give the energy in your mind focus. You'll feel the focus and be able to realize your place in the dream, and you'll have control. You will be dreaming lucidly. You will remember what the dreams can't tell you awake."

"And how will you do this?"

"A touch, and some meditation. Go to sleep," Ked said. She closed her eyes, but still looked about as comfortable as a penguin in Si Wong. Ked rolled his eyes, pulling the water from his flask into gloves, which he set alight and touched to each temple. Her eyes flicked open for a moment, but with a tightening of her jaw, closed again. Already that chaotic energy was there. It wasn't just her dreams which were plaguing her. It was her waking mind as well. He began to hum lightly in the darkness, bathed only in the tiny amount of light the water from his hands gave off. After a few minutes, Azula stirred slightly, moving into a pose which might be more sleep than 'waiting until sunrise'.

Ked continued humming. Quite to his surprise, he heard her voice, quiet in the dimness. "What is that song, anyway?" she seemed quite groggy. Considering the past few days, it wouldn't be surprising.

"Nothing," Ked lied. "Just something to help you sleep."

After a few more minutes, she slipped into her dreams once more. And this time, Ked was here to keep them from becoming nightmares.

* * *

Azula looked at the dolls in her hand, then dropped them, looking at her hands themselves. They were pudgy, stubby fingered. The hands of a child. Azula quickly got off the floor and ran over to the table, having to jump up and arm-pull herself up to see her reflection in the mirror atop it. True to her suspicions, she was five years old. But her mind was twenty three. No. Seventeen. No, thirteen? Her reflection shot through all four visages before settling on the five year old, confusing Azula enough to make her drop back to the ground. She rubbed her backside, which had banged hard against the unforgiving obsidian.

Azula turned behind her, and saw a thin yellow light connecting to her back, forming a stream which vanished into the shadows at the top of the room. "Alright," Azula said, her voice somehow both old and young, "I'm asleep. And dreaming. So what was so important?" Azula wandered, unsure what it was she was supposed to find. This was interminable. Even when she had the tools to spelunk inside her own mind, it was working against her.

"That's because you don't want to know what you're hiding," Azula said. But it was an Azula Azula had never been, and never known. It was a bloody Azula, a battered Azula, covered in bruises and dressed in rags, her hair matted and filthy. "If you keep searching, you'll find pain. Horrible, unspeakable pain."

"So you are the door keeper of my secrets, are you?" Azula asked. "So what is it that has me so confounded that I can't know it consciously? Did the Avatar do this to me? Did he sabotage my mind?"

"No. The Avatar hasn't been seen in a century," the other Azula said, confused and afraid. Azula scowled at her. "Please, just run away. I can't hold him away much longer."

"Then don't," Azula demanded. "Let me see."

The other Azula sobbed, then flickered, vanishing like a guttering flame. Then, instantly, Azula was in a different room. She was at Father's side, tugging on his robes. She wanted to ask him something. When he was going to visit Zuzu, since it would do her brother a world of good to know their father was still thinking of them. She tugged once more.

"What is it? What? What is so important that you need to steal my attention?" Ozai shouted. Despite herself, Azula shrunk back.

"I-I-I just wanted to know when you were gonna..."

Ozai pulled her very close, twisting her hand painfully. "Speak clearly, or be silent, girl," Ozai demanded.

Azula stared into golden eyes, fear that both young and old Azula could feel, even if neither understand. "Zuko wants to see you. Can't you visit him? He needs some hope, something to lift his spirits."

"The boy is sickened in his very soul and I have no need for him. Now go away," Ozai said dismissively, giving her a rough shove.

"But..."

"I said leave!" Ozai reached to one side and backhanded the girl, knocking her to the floor. He rose to his full height, towering over her. "Get out of my sight you useless child."

Azula broke and run, tears streaming down her cherubic face. It wasn't until she had cleared the room, gotten away from Ozai's presence, that the elder Azula felt the spell holding her silent break. "What was that?" she asked. "That made no sense. He never thought I was useless. I was always his worthy vessel, the one worthwhile thing to come out of his marriage to Mother."

And yet, there it was. It was memory. She knew it was just from the feel of it, the way it so easily slotted into what she already knew. A memory which had become buried inside her own mind. A memory which didn't make any sense. Ozai never treated her like that. And yet, her own memories now said that he did. She opened her eyes, and was looking up at the canopy over her bed. She quickly threw her legs over the side, as the sound of sloshing water came to her ears. She ignited a ball of red flame over her hand. So this was later, but still before she turned eleven years old.

She walked toward the sound, silently, with hostile intention. The light dispelled the shadows as she approached, and she beheld a figure in a robe, running a towel down her arms. She stopped, turning toward that light, and the towel slipped from her hand, landing on the floor. It was Mother, no doubt about that. "What are you doing here so late?" Azula asked. "What's going to happen to..."

Azula was cut off when her mother ran toward her. Azula took a wary step backward, but Ursa's embrace could not be denied, even thought it brought the woman to her knees. She kept repeating apologies, begging for forgiveness for some unmentioned slight. The flame in Azula's hand snuffed out, a side effect of her confusion, and she stood stock still for almost a minute, her young mind trying to figure out what in the blood seas of Hell was going on.

"Mother, what are you doing in my room?" Azula finally managed to ask as Ursa's weeping petered out.

"I did something... I believe I will regret," Ursa said, slowly getting composure back into her voice. She stared at her daughter for a long time. "Azula, I want you to know that no matter what you thought, I never stopped caring about you."

"You're lying," both aspects of Azula said at once. "You only cared about Zuzu."

"I couldn't," she said. "I refused to make the cardinal sin of loving one child more than the other. I need you to remember that, Azula. I always loved you. No matter what... that man says to you, tomorrow or next week or next year or next decade, remember that. Your mother always loved you, and believed in you."

"I don't understand," Azula said. "Why are you bleeding? What did you do?"

"I murdered Azulon," Ursa said coldly, sitting back and finally releasing Azula from her grasp. Azula stared at her mother. "I will never let anybody hurt my children. Not assassins, not my husband, not the Fire Lord himself. When he signed your brother's death warrant, he found he'd signed his own."

The elder Azula marveled, in a distracted sort of way, how much Ursa... sounded like Azula. Or possibly the reverse. "But you killed the Fire Lord. You're a traitor!"

"I'm also a mother. I don't care what happens to me. I kept you safe. I kept both of you safe."

"Oh, please, like anything was going to happen to me," Azula chided.

"Not today, but what happens when Ozai doesn't need you anymore?" Ursa pointed out.

Azula scowled. "You're talking nonsense. Father loves me."

"No, he doesn't," Ursa said solidly. "I don't even think he _can_."

"It wasn't like you were there," Azula said. Ursa took one of her hands and held it tight.

"Yes, I was. I was always watching over you. Why do you think I was always around Zuko? Because you were, too," Ursa said. "Just try to remember the way it really was, instead of what Jeong Jeong taught you."

"The Firemaster told me the truth."

"The Firemaster has his own agenda, and he's been manipulating this family since Azulon's day," Ursa said harshly. "Look at things as they are, Azula. I taught you that much."

Azula pondered briefly. "So you're an assassin. I have to call the guard."

Ursa nodded slowly. "I know you do. Because that's the role you have to play right now. But Azula, please, just... give me a bit of time to say goodbye to your brother, first."

"Why did you come _here_?" Azula asked.

"Because I wanted to see my daughter one more time," Ursa said, with brutal honesty. "Because I wanted her to know that no matter what happens, I will always be proud of her. I will always love her, and I will never forget her."

Only at this exact moment did it dawn on Azula that this was it. Ursa was really leaving. She wasn't coming back. Azula's jaw tightened, her eyes clenched tight, and she quickly grabbed her mother in a desperate embrace, even though her conflicted mind hadn't came up with a satisfactory answer as to why, yet. Just one last time, she wanted her Mama to hold her. Ursa actually started sniffling again, holding back the sobs.

"You and your brother... you were the only people in my life who ever made me feel loved," Ursa said quietly. She gently pushed Azula back. "Thank you. Thank you for giving me the courage to say goodbye. Azula, please, promise me that you'll protect your brother. He needs somebody strong, like you, looking out for him. Please..."

"Alright, I'll do it," Azula swore. The elder Azula was perplexed at this. Trying to hold a brave, or in this case, belligerent, face, Azula scowled. "You'd better hurry up. I don't have m-much patience for traitors," she said, an unexpected hitch in her own voice. Ursa nodded, then pulled off her dress, igniting it idly as she pulled a long, dark cloak from the back of Ursa's wardrobe. It went to Azula's heels, but on Ursa, it only covered to the backs of her knees. She gave one last smile, desperate and tearful, to Azula, before departing. But she paused at the door.

"Don't ever lose who you are, Azula," she said. "You're so much more than Ozai wants to make you."

And with that, she was gone.

"Go back now," that battered Azula begged, tears running from her blackened eyes. "I can't keep him away. It hurts too much!"

"You have the answers I want," she demanded. "Show me now!"

She was standing at her door, about to lock it for the night. Only a fool left the doors unlocked. But as she was sliding the bolt home, she felt somebody slam into the other side. Not as though they were trying to batter it down, but rather as though they expected it to open and walked into it when it didn't. Azula rolled her eyes, knowing it could only be one person, and opened the door back up again. One hand cupped over her nose, but not diminishing the brilliant grin in the slightest, was Ty Lee.

"So you came after all," Azula said, opening the door. Ty Lee bounced in, that smile brightening up the room. It wasn't the first time Ty Lee had shown up in Azula's room at an hour usually reserved for assassins and Azuli, or those that were a combination of both. In fact, it wasn't even the hundredth. Ty Lee, in the truest, most unquantifiable sense of the word, was the first, and truest _friend_ Azula had ever been able to make. "I have to thank you for... introducing me to Kenta. I think it's the first time one didn't run away in fear as soon as they saw me."

"Of course I'd do that for you," Ty Lee said. But there was something behind those big brown eyes, something not usually in the acrobatic noble's repertoire. Regret. "Azula... I think we need to talk."

"About what?" Azula said, sitting on her bed. Ty Lee paced on the floor before her, fiddling with her fingers as she tried to come up with the proper way of saying it. Ty Lee might have always had a good heart – until she betrayed me, the elder Azula interjected into her own thoughts – but her brain was a bit more suspect. "Could you stop pacing? It's distracting," she said in the not-entirely-serious way she did around her and Mai.

Ty Lee got a hang-dog expression briefly, like she'd done something unforgivable instead of merely a faux pas. "I'm... leaving," Ty Lee said quietly. There was a sinking feeling in Azula's chest.

"What do you mean, leaving?" Azula asked, hollowly.

"I'm leaving my home," she said. Her eyes welled up. "I can't stand it there anymore! It's like I don't even have my own name! The spirits know I already don't have my own face!"

"Calm down. It's going to be alright," Azula said, not entirely comfortable trying to placate somebody, even if it was her dearest friend. But still there lurked a hint of betrayal. Ty Lee was leaving her. Just like Mother.

"Don't do that," Ty Lee said. "Your aura just went all blue there for a second. Blue is a bad color."

"Ever since you trained with Piandao, you were always a bit... batty," Azula said, trying to seem light and airy, and par for the course, failing miserably, sounding horribly artificial. "I... am glad that you saw fit to inform me. I would have hated to have learned about this from a letter you sent from wherever it is you're go..."

Azula was cut off when Ty Lee's tongue unexpectedly went down her throat. Her first instinct was, of course, to struggle free and demand answers, but this was like most of Ty Lee's embraces; you got out when she let you. And by the time Ty Lee let her, she didn't want to anymore. There was a look in the girl's eyes, one which she could almost see reflected back in herself. A hunger. A need. A lust that even the thirteen year old Azula couldn't mistake for anything else. A goodbye which would never be forgotten. Even the elder Azula still remembered what came next. Awkward, definitely. They were both as girls, and neither had a clue what they were doing. But it wasn't embarrassing. Azula felt... warmly... about that night. As the girl closed her eyes, pulling the oldest friend, turned sudden lover close–

Terror.

Blood.

The Embiar Boy, a smoking hole through his chest.

"Run! Get out while you still can!" Azula's hoarse voice screamed. Azula stumbled to a halt. She was in her room again. Her back felt afire, and every whisper of her robe across her back was most exquisite agony. Her skin was anemically pale. Everybody was giving her a very wide berth. She looked down at her forearms. There were not scars. There were scabs. Fresh, jagged, brutal scabs, dried blood holding scraps of skin together. She felt numb. Hollowed out. And it all started here. In her bedroom. With a roar of _unspeakable_ rage, she bent, and the brilliant azure fire danced at her command, searing out and utterly consuming everything in the room, burning the black rock blacker, evaporating the paint, melting the gold inlays into misshapen lumps, reducing even the stone pillars holding up the canopy of her bed to runny, molten-candle-esque stumps. Tears flowed from her eyes as her dervish of destruction consumed the last thing in easy reach. She slowly, unsteadily hobbled to the lavatory off of her room, and looked at herself in the mirror.

That harridan stared back at her. The weeping Azula. She was a monster.

She screamed, and punched the mirror, raining down shattered glass.

"Enough! I can't deal with this anymore," Azula said, reaching behind her and grasping that strand. She pulled, and found herself pulled from her own body. And after another tug, pulled out of the dream completely. The division put a comfortable distance between herself and the agony, which she still couldn't understand. Had she been injured? If it was simple injury, why had she felt such _shame_? She was standing in that room again. This time, there were four windows, one of them once again black and muffled, the other three the memories she had encountered before. She glanced around. So this was her mind, was it? Hmm. She expected something more high-class. As she sat, there happened to be an acceptably comfortable chair, and she patiently waited to awaken.

She never noticed the red-haired man watching her from the darkness, a grin on his face.

* * *

Azula started snoring a little. Contrary to what she would have others believe, she was actually a little adorable when she was sleeping. She must have been actually putting forth an effort to make herself seem more frightening, to compensate for when she was asleep. Of course, Chan didn't like the way Ked was touching her, but also contrary to popular belief, Chan wasn't an idiot. The barbarian had a healthy respect – no, that wasn't exactly right. He had a healthy _fear_ of Azula, so he would do nothing inappropriate. Ked glanced over, beheld Chan, and slowly slid away from where he had been sitting, cradling Azula's head on his knees like a pillow, glowing hands on either side of her head. She kept sleeping, muttering something incoherent before turning away from the door, and the snoring picked up again.

"You're treading dangerous ground," Chan said.

"I'm trying to help her," Ked said with a shrug. He looked tired. Actually, the barbarian looked exhausted, but there was no telling how long he had been in there working his magic water. "I just hope that I managed to do some good for her. It's all up to her, now."

Ked went, not toward his room, but out the wheelhouse door, leaning beside that portal, looking to the moon which was hanging near the horizon. The sun would be rising soon. Daybreak. "You're going well above the call of duty with this 'service' thing," Chan commented.

"I am, ain't I?" Ked muttered.

Chan nodded, pacing to the rail and back. "And there's a reason for that, isn't there?"

"Well, I'm trying to protect the people I care about," Ked said. "If I don't deliver Azula, my family..."

"That's not it," Chan said, wedging his fingers together. "I've seen when people get blackmailed. They perform, yeah, but with resentment and bitterness. I haven't seen either of those in you. You _want_ to do this."

"And here I was starting to think Azula was right and you were an idiot," Ked said with a small smile. Chan tightened his jaw, but decided not to slug the little bastard for insulting him. Ked was sleep deprived. That entitled him to _one_ freebie.

"So. Why?"

"Does it matter?"

"Don't you pull that trick and turn the questions around on me," Chan said. "Why are you doing this?"

Ked let out a low sigh. "Because she's worth saving," he answered quietly.

"If I find you're doing anything inappropriate..."

"Why does everybody feel the need to say that today?" Ked asked, scowling. "I get it, she's royalty, I'm a barbarian; I don't need it drilled into my head. Besides, she's perfectly capable of taking care of herself. Most of the time."

Chan was about to launch into the rest of his lecture anyway, but he heard a scraping sound, one that he, as a soldier, was extremely familiar with. The whisper of sharp metal against leather. His eyes went wide and he managed to flinch just enough that the plunging knife which would have split his head like a coconut instead dug hard into his shoulder. He didn't even bother shouting in pain – and there was a great deal of pain – instead focusing on throwing his head back into the assassin, smashing the jaw even before the assailant finished landing. If there was one good thing about having, as Chan's instructors always said, 'a thick head', it made headbutting a useful proposition. Chan turned, that dagger still lodged in his back, and elbowed hard into the man's liver, doubling him over. With his one useful hand, he grabbed the man's – no, wait, it was a woman who'd stabbed him – face and slammed it back into the bulkhead, once, twice, and with a sickening crunch, a third and final time.

Chan looked up, and Ked was inching away on his back, hand clasped over a bleeding wound in his side, as three others quickly circled him. So Chan obviously wasn't the target. The killers were all dressed in dark colors, but not like those of locals. Not even Azuli dressed like this. They were wearing robes, of a green so dark it was almost black in the dim light. Their feet were also bare, silent against the metal deck.

Chan had seen enough. He regretted the decision as he made it, but he used the wall behind him to lever the knife in his back to a position where he could grab it, then hurled it at one of the killers circling Ked. It struck him in the hamstring, causing him to stumble and leave himself open. Chan followed through with a strong, focused bolt of flame which slammed into his chest, knocking him back so hard that he struck with a brutal snap against the rail, almost bending double backwards, before slipping over and falling into the water.

So far not so much as a word had been spoken, the only sounds being Ked's clipped cry of alarm, and the sounds of two men dying in silence. One of the two remaining turned from Ked, and punched toward Chan. He expected a bolt of flame to launch at him, and moved into a twist block, but instead, a fist of stone slammed into his wrist, dragging it away and pinning it behind him. The other hand struck forward, and a second fist flew to join the first. But Chan learned from his disastrous 'Sokka Kai' against Wang Fire, and most importantly, learned not to make the same mistake over and over. He tipped back, kicking out with a foot and letting flame blast from his heel. It smashed the stone hand as it flew.

And Chan was also, as he appeared, an extremely strong man. The assassin's eyes widened a bit when Chan took two running strides forward, then twisted his entire body, using the assassin's earthbending against him. His spin put all of that energy into the laden fist which had been pinned behind him. While Chan was not a man of physics, he knew that something heavy always hurt more than something light, and something swung hard always punished more than something swung feebly. So when he swung his fist with both his own strength and the strength of the assassin's bending behind it, it landed with a brutal snap, caving in the man's collarbone.

The assassin, not to be put away so easily, lashed out once again, this time with something black covering his fingernails. It sliced through Chan's shirt and skin with contemptuous ease, and blood began to run down Chan's torso, on both sides now by his two wounds. Despite being now in the same boat as Chan in having only one usable arm, the killer lashed out again, striking at Chan's eyes. The firebender caught the strike, just in time, too. The claws cut shallowly at the skin at the corner of Chan's eye, the thumb so close it could almost touch his eyelashes.

Chan stomped the killer's foot, then kicked hard at the knee, buckling it. With the claws no longer in danger of tearing out one of Chan's eyes, he kicked hard into the gut of the killer, causing his feet to slide out from under him. Chan released the hand, then delivered a flaming punch to the face. The killer went still.

Chan looked up. One of them was standing behind Ked, a knife pressed to his neck. "Just let me kill the barbarian, and you won't see us again," the man said, his Huojian accented heavily.

"Put down the knife and I'll consider not killing you," Chan said.

"You had better listen to him. He is very good at killing things," the dangerous voice of Azula appeared behind Chan. He glanced to her, and she was staring past him. "So this is how it is? I remember a time not so long ago when you swore loyalty to me."

"We serve our master, not you," the assassin said, green eyes narrowing. "Don't get in our way."

"That's a problem," Azula said. "I can't let you kill him. I find him useful. I don't allow others to take anything that's mine. So drop the knife, or lose your life."

"No matter what you do, I'll still kill him," the assassin countered. "I can cut his throat as fast as a lightning strike. You can't stop me."

Azula stared at him, as she had the entire time. Like she was making a decision, or perhaps discovering that she'd made one. But the moment he mentioned lightning, a distant smirk came to her face. And the last sentence might as well have been spoken in satire, because his last word was punctuated by her pulling her right hand from behind her, to thrusting before. That half-arc was cut in lightning, following her arm and leaving a green afterimage in Chan's sight. It was launched in a fraction of a second, and a great thunderclap tore through the air between them as it connected with the almost hidden face of the killer almost instantly. The blade drew across Ked's neck, but not deep enough to open his veins completely. He collapsed to the deck, clasped over his wounds, as the killer fell back, a smoking hole in his head.

* * *

Azula was still in that pose, the sloppiest form she had ever known, her fingers thrust forward, but without any of the grace that the lightning Kata demanded. It had worked. She looked at the entire event again in her mind, trying to figure out _why _it had worked, but at the moment, the most baffling thing was that it had.

Chan was bleeding fairly heavily, but so was Ked. The Tribesman waved Chan's attention away from him as he worked with the water, making those glowing gloves, and pressed hard on the gouge across his neck. After about a minute, the members of the crew had started to pour onto deck, asking what happened. The three corpses were all the explanation they needed. Dai Li agents, all of them. Azula had worked with them before, when she'd briefly conquered the whole of Ba Sing Se, and by extension all of the East Continent. But she had sent them away, and they found a new master. Or rather, an old one. They were working for Long Feng again.

Azula stared silently, trying to grasp what it was she had done differently, as the sun began to peek over the horizon, filling her with renewed vigor and vitality. The sun was always a part of her life, one she could never ignore. It fed the fire which powered her. Without that fire, she was nothing. She knew it as clear as day.

They had been sent to kill Ked. But why? To remove him from the equation. It was the simplest answer. Ked represented an unknown factor, a wildcard which nobody wanted to deal with. Thus, Long Feng took the simplest solution, and sent somebody to kill him. Somebody who failed, but only barely. The cynical part of her, that part which usually spoke in the voice of that disheveled double, asked why she even bothered saving him. An equally cynical but distinct part of her answered it was so that she may properly jab that smug bastard in the eye at any opportunity she could find. Never mind that he was helpful, and loyal. And he made her mind obey her again. And let her remember happier times...

Oddly, even knowing what she knew now about her mother, there was still a lingering sense of bitterness, resentment, and anger. Lacking the background she thought she had, it was a puzzle as to why Azula would feel this way, even now. She didn't like when things were out of place, and this was _decidedly_ out of place. Ursa was proud of her, proud of her warrior child. So why did Azula still feel a desire to scream at her until her lungs bled?

Her eyes snapped up at the other firebender when she realized he'd addressed her. She chided herself for her obliviousness and put on an impatient expression. "What is it now?"

"They found the boat these bastards came aboard on," Chan said. "We know what they were here for. But we don't know why, and who sent them."

"Long Feng," Azula said simply. He looked a bit confused. "He's an old foe of mine, still bitter that I outplayed him in a game, a long time ago."

Chan scoffed. "Then he needs to find a less competitive hobby."

Azula turned inward again. New memories, effortlessly sliding into place where other things had been brutally shoved in before. Mama. Somehow, despite everything she thought she knew, Mama actually did care about her. Those... hallucinations, they were memories, trying to surface, Azula trying to remember the things her mother had said to her years before, but skewed for the shift of context. One thing Azula still couldn't remember was what she was talking about with Ty Lee before she left. Who the hell was Kenta? And why did she suddenly remember _Father_ striking her when she was a child?

And none of that, either in parts or together, explained how she got her lightning back.

Ked was limping by, blood soaking his clothing and dyeing it a hideous color. He paused at her side, staring at her with those very dark blue eyes. "Thank you," he said quietly, and tentatively, as though afraid to open the wound at his throat. "You didn't _have_ to do that."

But some part of her knew she had. And then, a piece slid into place. Why she had lost her lightning, and why she had gotten it back. She lost it because she tried to use it to kill her second oldest friend. The conflict that caused her, the imbalance it bore, the pointlessness and needless brutality of it, all drove a schism into her control. And when she got it back, right this minute... The law of parsimony was clear. The simplest solution, all other things being equal, is the correct one. If the reason she lost her lightning was because she tried to use it to kill one of her friends, then perhaps she got it back... because she wanted to protect one.

* * *

Fire Lord Zuko stared down at the map arrayed before the Burning Throne. Of course, since the first day of Zuko's reign, the name was something of a misnomer; he didn't ignite a veil of fire to separate himself from the masses. That was his predecessors' way of doing things, but not his. "So how many are we talking about here?" Zuko asked.

"All of them," Yeh-Lu, a long-time soldier who had accepted his amnesty, said. She pointed out out along the entire Ember Archipelago, and and aide hovering nearby began to lay out markers. "As far as I can tell, every single military unit based in or stationed in the Ember provinces has gone into a state of open rebellion."

"That's..." Zuko shook his head.

"Unfortunate," Mai said coldly at his side. The older of the generals, those who had served in Ozai's administration but accepted the amnesty, had protested loudly at Zuko's inclusion of the Fire Lady in military matters. But he would have it no other way. "Confusing, too. Ember wouldn't rebel without something to rally around. We still have Ozai sitting in a cell, so..."

"They have my sister," Zuko said darkly.

"Indeed," Lee, one of the younger generals said. He pointed to the garrisons down the chain. "She could be anywhere, but the standing belief is that this is her doing."

"She will strike, and soon," Mai said, rubbing a hand over her belly, staring at that map. "If I know Azula, and I think that I do, it will come from a direction we won't see coming," Mai turned to her husband. "Which is why I already started assembling a fighting force to be stationed in the Crater City until further notice."

"This is highly unusual," Colonel Yoto said loudly. "The Fire Lady has no authority to..."

"This isn't a matter of _if I may_ raise an army, Yoto. It is a matter that I _already have_," Mai said coldly. Yoto blustered, but returned to his seat. Zuko gave her a quiet, private smile. She had found herself the most powerful Fire Lady in recent history, and Zuko, as often stated, would have it no other way. For all intents and purposes, it meant that he could be in two places at once.

"The only question becomes, what does my sister have planned?" Zuko said, leaning forward. "If she is as cunning as I think, there may be little we can do to stop her."

* * *

The swearing was quite vehement from the sacked room in Grand Ember. The riots had died down, and now, soldiers were walking the streets, and the people threw flowers down at them as they passed. Soldiers in electric blue armor. Vachir didn't care about politics. Not really. The only good part about them was that the back-room dealing of the high meant there was a steady stream of targets for Vachir to practice on.

Mongke finally emerged from the room, wearing only his pants. "This had better be good, Vachir. I was enjoying myself."

"You might enjoy this, too," Vachir said with a ophidian grin. "We've located the actress. The troublesome one probably won't be needed at all."

Mongke pondered briefly, before a smirk came to his face. "This _is_ good news. Retrieve her at once. Take Ogedai."

Vachir turned, but Mongke's hand clasped over his shoulder. "And one more thing. If you ever interrupt my fun again, I take it out on your face. Understood?"

It only made Vachir's grin grow wider. "Oh, I'm looking forward to it."

* * *

_Leave a review._


	7. She Sets With The Sun :Part 1:

**I think the kindest way of putting this is that I push hard on what qualifies for a T rating.**

**This is the first of the two-part Fear Arc finale, where that somewhat expected thirty Xanatos Gambit Pileup happens. Every party has plans which are either in contention with or outright mutually exclusive of each other. So when they clash, they clash hard. Oddly, it is Long Feng's scheme which is the most resilient of all, but it's also the one which is never really explained, but somebody capable of a bit of inferrence will be able to see what he was going for. The whole reason Azula included this in her plans was because despite everything, she could not trust in the capabilities of anybody but herself to get a job done. So she decided that she had to do it herself. And that set up a lot of... fun? Is that the word I'm looking for?**

**To answer questions: If Azula and Katara fight, if it's during the day, Azula wins. It's much closer than any fight she'll have to deal with, usually, but she wins. If its at night, then a whole host of factors come into play. Katara 'threw a thunderstorm' at Yan Rha because she was augmented by the power of the Blood Moon, a force which synchs up, at most, twice to three times a year, if even that. So yes, she could go Fire-Nation-On-Sozin's-Comet on somebody... for eight hours a year, and she doesn't get to choose which eight. Azula's just consistently powerful. As for Azula's capacity with lightning... well, she could, but as of right now, the only way she knows how to use lightning is the way Jeong Jeong taught her. She, unlike her brother, is not terribly inventive when it comes to firebending. At least, right now, she couldn't be. Resisting bloodbending, on the other hand, is not in her repertoire, because bloodbending ignores the energy in the body, and just goes for the water. If she wanted to flash vaporise every droplet of cytoplasm in her entire body, then yes, she could escape it, if at the cost of becoming a faint pink vapor. Water is always a problem for Azula. She's not phobic about it, but it bothers her that she's dependant for survival on something which makes her bending weaker by its very presence. **

**And one other thing: Why does Zuko react as though Azula is still... Azula-y? Because he has no idea why she broke down. Much as Ozai did about Zuko's mother, he jerked Zuko around about his sister. I was not kidding when I mentioned in the last book that Ozai was consistently the worst human being I've ever wrote.**

**And from the way that Azula doesn't recall what Ozai did to her on the week of Sozin's Comet, you'd almost think there was something wrong with her mind.**

* * *

Azula opened her eyes, despite having been awake for almost an hour already. After all this time cooling her heels in Betla, the time was finally here. She had spent that time doing what she did best: Planning. Ked knew the plan, since he had a part to play in it. The soldier on the other hand was left decidedly out of the loop. As soon as they reached the fortress overlooking the town, he had gone from occasionally useful to obsolete. To his credit, Chan was keeping his mouth closed about her. She hadn't expected that level of confidentiality.

Much of what she needed was being gathered elsewhere. She couldn't let anybody know what she was doing, because that would tip her hand and show those who stood at the head of this conspiracy, Long Feng and Jeong Jeong, that she was much more capable than they suspected she was. If they found out before she wanted them to, she didn't doubt for an instant that they would take steps to hobble her. She wouldn't put it past either. She paused briefly at the mirror, staring at the face she now had to live with. The resemblance she bore to her mother was still striking, but she could see her father there, as well. No time for introspection. She had a job to do.

With a few pins and some practiced twirls, she gathered her long black hair up and pinned it back in a broad bun. Then, she fed the bangs which hung beside her eyes back and pinned them through the bun as well. Her trademark hairstyle gone, she was much less distinct, recognizable. It was only the first part of her disguise, but it was the part she could take care of now. A smirk came to her face. She looked over the cosmetics on the vanity. Oh, what the hell. She picked up the red lipstick, and smoothly ran it along her lips, painting them a bright red. It had been so long since she'd been able to complete her favored appearance, bright red lips, bright golden eyes, lustrous black hair, that it almost felt like she'd been holding her breath until she could. In a way, without her lipstick, she felt naked.

She pulled out the long robe, dyed the color of blood so long dry that it had started to rot. It concealed her completely. Under this, she could be anybody. It wasn't the first time she'd hidden herself. It probably wouldn't be the last. Strangely, it felt good to be unknown, incognito. It was something she never had in childhood. She was always recognized. Always revered. Sometimes it got tiring. She opened the door, and true to his word, Ked was waiting directly outside in his white physician's coat. "The time has come."

"There's a complication," Ked said, falling in step with her. She frowned. "Long Feng wants to talk to me. About your condition. To see if you'll be capable of delivering that 'speech' he has planned."

"Oh, I'll be ready," Azula said, her tone low and poisonous. She raised a brow. "How will this interfere with the scenario?"

"Ideally, not," Ked said. "I always plan with more time than strictly necessary. It's far safer to have more time to act than having more actions than time to enact them."

"You would make a poor general," Azula said casually. "The gift of rulership is knowing that everything must take place in its proper time. Even you could stand to learn that lesson."

"My way kept us from having to come up with an entirely new plan when something went wrong," Ked said with a smirk. "You're plans are all iron and crystal. Pretty to look at, but if the slightest thing twists out of place, the whole thing shatters. I make my plans out of rope. It's ugly as hell, looks rickety beyond compare, but when something inevitably goes wrong, I can just tie a knot and move on."

"And that's why my people almost conquered yours," Azula said, taking his analogy.

"And that's why my people weren't conquered," Ked amended, with a smirk. "Luckily, I've thought of a place close at hand to where you need to be to hide until the time is right."

"Impossible. The security in the garrison is unmatched. Jeong Jeong is as properly paranoid as I am," Azula said.

"Well, there's one place where he won't be expecting somebody to be hiding. The prisons," Ked said with a grin.

"Surely you are joking," Azula said. But Ked remained insufferably smug.

"Oh, I'm quite serious. And don't call me Shr-Lee."

Ked led the way, bearing her down into the guts of the fortress, around anybody who would have a chance of recognizing her, and bore her into the prison area. It was remarkably bare, the long cells vacant. At the far end of the room were a pair of doors. Ked extracted a key from his pocket and opened it, before tossing it to her and motioning her inside. "This is the place," Ked said.

Azula entered the room. Like some of the cells in Ashfall, it was a room with a cage inside it. Chained to one corner, hand and foot, was a pathetic figure, filthy and still. "So you're brilliant plan is to have me sit in a room occupied by a man so degenerate they couldn't even bother washing him while you mingle with the manipulators? Azula asked flatly.

"First of all," the figure said, voice high but raspy, "these are tits, despite their diminutive proportion. That makes me a woman. And second, they stopped bathing me when I remembered there was nothing stopping me from biting them."

Azula stared at the filthy woman in the cell and back to Ked. "You will pay for this, Tribesman. You will pay in blood."

* * *

**Chapter 7: She Sets With The Sun (Part 1)**

* * *

Ked nervously pulled out his pocket watch, and scowled when all of the hands were stock still. He kept forgetting to wind the damned thing, so it was about as useful at telling time as your average coma patient. Slipping the expensive and personally useless device back into his pocket, he gave a start when his eyes drifted back up and locked with the green-eyed gaze of Long Feng. The man, according to Azula, had once been the Grand Secretariat of Ba Sing Se, until a series of incremental loses at the hands of the Avatar and his merry band of lackeys, with a decisive deathblow dealt by Azula herself. His head was smooth, but whether it was shaved or simply bald was anybody's guess. A faded scar reached down one cheek, moving parallel to his trailing mustaches. Two silent guards, looking exactly like the men who tried to kill him on the ferry to Betla stood behind him.

"I was beginning to wonder if you were going to show up on time," Ked said, forcing himself to be flip. Long Feng betrayed no annoyance.

"Have you delivered the Princess as requested?" Long Feng asked smoothly.

"She is showing periods of lucidity reaching into the hours," Ked lied, sticking to the story he'd developed. "When not, she is in a suggestible state, but people might mistake her acting during that time as her being drugged or something. I need more time to make her..."

"You are out of time," Long Feng said. "And you have fallen short of our agreement."

Ked made a placating motion. He had practiced this entire conversation with Azula, down to his expressed reactions, so that he wouldn't betray anything but what he wanted Long Feng to see. "That was a liberal estimate of my progress and you know it. I'm well above my worst case scenarios, and she hasn't yet reached a psychological plateau. There is still room for improvement."

"And if I do not desire improvement?" Long Feng asked.

Ked put on a suspicious look. "Well... I guess... I could... stabilize here. But why?"

"Do so," Long Feng said. "Your continued employment will see great rewards gifted to you."

Ked didn't need to act very hard to look nervous. "And my sister? You'll leave her out of this?"

"You have my word," Long Feng nodded, the barest hint of a smirk on his face. "No harm shall come to her from my hand."

And what of the thousand other hands at your disposal, Long Feng? There was an exchange of stares. Long Feng's green eyes drifted downward, to the scars on the side of Ked's neck, and the broad, hard line where Ked had had to reattach the greater part of his left hand. Ked wasn't the best judge of a person's reactions, but the earthbender seemed to display annoyance. Not that Ked had been injured. That he survived.

"And another thing. I find I'm running out of that money you offered," Ked said, acting sheepish. "There were unexpected expenses."

"You will have a new stipend when you have done work worthy of it," Long Feng said dismissively. An eyebrow raised. "Tell me, waterbender, what has become of her other guardian? That firebender?"

"I don't know and I don't really care," Ked said. Astoundingly enough, not a single one of Long Feng's questions or responses hadn't been predicted by Azula. This either meant that she was very good at what she did, or else Long Feng was just terribly predictable. Ked doubted the latter. "Is that all? I was about to have lunch."

Long Feng let out a grunt, eyes narrowing briefly. "You are hiding something from me, Tribesman. I do not know what. But know this: if it displeases me at all, the blood resulting will be on your hands."

A chill ran through Ked's body. He thought he'd done so well, too. Azula was good, but so was Long Feng. The former Grand Secretariat rose and departed without one further word, those silent killers, those Dai Li agents, turning to walk in his shadow. Ked buried his attention in a menu for a few minutes, until he was sure they were well out of eye and earshot. "Well, that was absolutely hair-raising," Ked muttered.

A hammer clattered onto the table, and a man dropped into the seat opposite Ked. "Well, it's about to get a bit more, isn't it?" the newcomer asked. A dark smile flashed under bright blue eyes. Ked's own eyes grew wide, as his mind tried to reject the notion that _he_ could be _here_.

"Impossible," Ked said. Sokka Baihu's grin grew wider.

"Hello, neighbor."

* * *

Jeong Jeong hated many people. The last forty years of his life had seen him slowly rectify that vast hatred. His arrogant, foolish, insanely ambitious student was dead. His teacher unmade by 'unfortunate circumstances'. The Fire Lord undone as destiny seemed to declare inevitable. In fact, of the vast list of people that Jeong Jeong hated, most of them were dead, imprisoned, or mad. The sole exception was the current Fire Lord, but he had hopes that would soon change as well. But there was one person whom Jeong Jeong had great hatred for, one which grew every passing day, that he held no illusions as to the downfall of.

"Oh, come on, don't be such a gloomy bastard, J.J.," Irukandji laughed, eating messily of foods that were of questionable edibility... Or questionable food-ness. In the most condescending tone imaginable, he said. "Things are finally looking up for you. Everything is going to work out, just you wait."

It didn't help that Irukandji wasn't people. Spirit, demon, God? That wasn't Jeong Jeong's place to say. But there was nobody alive – debatably – who Jeong Jeong wanted to hurt more. It galled that Jeong Jeong was denied doing so. "Why are you in my room? Again?" he demanded.

"I just wanted to see the look on your face," Irukandji answered, continuing to eat one of Jeong Jeong's hats. After this long, the Firemaster didn't bother asking questions anymore about the minor habits of the abomination. "Most notably, when nose-ring and grey-skin come knocking on your door with company in about five, four, three..."

Jeong Jeong scowled, but at the unvoiced announcement of zero, there was in fact a knock at his door. Jeong Jeong opened it, and true to Irukandji's prediction, Mongke and his lackey were standing outside. The larger of the two was carrying a squirming bag. "What is this?"

"Remember how you asked me to be more proactive?" Mongke asked. He threw the bag to the ground, and it let out a womanish cry of pain. "This is me being proactive."

The lackey opened the knot, and shoved hard on the bag, spilling a bound woman in her undergarments onto the rug. Jeong Jeong didn't hide his confusion.

"That's the stuff!" Irukandji shouted, spitting felt in the process.

"You must be aware how little I enjoy repeating myself. What is this, Mongke?" the Firemaster said darkly.

The lackey pulled the gag out of the woman's mouth. She turned to Jeong Jeong, obviously the highest ranked person in the room by posture alone, and stared. Her eyes were very clear gold, not the muddy amber of the lower classes. "Please, help me! I didn't do anything wrong, I don't belong here!"

The voice she spoke with was uncannily Azula's. A sudden, dry smile came to the Firemaster's face. Her hair wasn't quite as lustrous, and her complexion was somewhat darker than the Princess', but makeup would handle that easily. Jeong Jeong dragged her to her feet by her chin, and forced her lips open. She had all of her teeth, good. A cursory examination showed no moles, freckles or blemishes which would distinguish her. Jeong Jeong gave the woman a light push so she'd fall back onto the carpet.

"You have done well," Jeong Jeong said to Mongke, who smirked. He turned back to the woman. "What is your name, girl?"

"Y-Yui," she said. For some reason, hearing Azula's voice full of fear, even when it's source was obviously not her, ignited a dark sense of joy in the old Firemaster. "I-I'm an actress from L-Lesser Ember. I have..."

"Wrong!" Jeong Jeong shouted. She flinched with a yelp. Irukandji and Mongke's sallow underling both watched her with hungry expressions. "Your name is not Yui! It stopped being Yui the instant you came through that doorway! Is that perfectly clear?"

"Yes, sir," she said quietly, fearfully.

"Now, you are going to do exactly what I want you to do," Jeong Jeong said. "Failure to do so will result in punishment. And I believe I have somebody willing to administer that punishment," Jeong Jeong gave a significant glance to Mongke's man, who was practically salivating at the thought. "Do you understand?" the woman nodded. "Good. From this moment forth, you will not answer to your name. You will not contact, or attempt to contact any member of your family or social circles. Any attempt to do so will result in punishment."

"I don't..." the girl whispered.

"SILENCE!" Jeong Jeong shouted. "You will be performing one role, potentially for the rest of your life. If you perform it admirably, there will be rewards. You can assume what will happen if you perform poorly."

"You'll... kill me?" she asked.

"No, stupid girl. You will be punished. Until you die," Jeong Jeong leaned down. "You are a stroke of luck for us, girl. The alternative was much more problematic. But with you, we won't be needing her at all, which means we can simply dispose of her at the first opportunity. So ready yourself for the last role you will ever play; Fire Lord Azula."

* * *

"If you will notice," Sokka said calmly, his eyes flicking between the menu in his lap and the waterbender across from him, "I have a hammer, a strong, fast arm, and a doctorate in theoretical and applied physics. Tell me, _old buddy_, which of those do you think makes me the most dangerous?"

Ked swallowed. He glanced down to the hammer, then back up at his countryman. He briefly considered just making a break for it, but knew that Sokka had every opportunity to kill him before he sat down, which meant he had every opportunity to kill Ked if he tried to run. "The doctorate, I guess."

Sokka looked up at him. "No, you idiot. The hammer," he said, closing the menu. "And for the specific reason that it's all I have. You know what they say about a Tribesman nothing but with a hammer."

"Every problem looks like a nail," Ked finished. The two Tribesmen stared at each other. One assessing, the other, Ked, cold and angry. "I was trying to do the right thing."

"You kidnapped my friend's sister. How is that a good thing?"

"Kidnapped? Sokka, didn't you read the other half of the note?" Ked asked, leaning forward urgently. Sokka gave an odd look, then dug blindly through his bag until he pulled out the circle of stiff paper, laying it on the table.

"There was no other half. Just you explaining that you'd taken Azula," Sokka said. Ked slowly took a spoon, then dug it into the edge of the note. It split in half, showing that it was two notes that Ked had held together with weak glue. Sokka's eyes went wide, then he grabbed up the placard, his eyes sliding down it quickly. When he reached the bottom, he took both and read the whole thing once again. When he'd finished that, he set the thing down, and rubbed the back of his neck with an embarrassed expression. "Oh. Well... I guess I owe your hand an apology."

Sokka was about as surprised as Ked was when the latter slammed his fist into the former's face. Of course, it hurt a lot more than Ked had ever expected: he'd never had the occasion or inclination to punch a guy in the face before. The other patrons turned to stare, and Sokka picked himself up off the floor.

"_It's alright, I deserved that one_," the patrons muttered amongst themselves, then turned back to their own affairs. "And that's the only reason I'm not taking the hammer and reenacting scenes from Whalesh religious history. Who was it? Who was behind this? You didn't put that down."

"I didn't know at the time," Ked said. "But I do now. His name is Long Feng. He's working with the previous reign's Firemaster to foment a rebellion and throw a coup. They intend to use Azula as a figurehead."

"I guess Long Feng really is an idiot if he thinks Azula is going to remain a figurehead," Sokka said, running fingers down his short beard.

"He doesn't know her like I do. He still thinks she's barely cogent. Even Jeong Jeong doesn't know better."

"Long Feng and Jeong Jeong," Sokka shook his head. "Didn't see that pairing coming. What's your part in this, little dude?"

"Don't call me that," Ked muttered darkly. He glared hard at the thug who'd made his early life a misery. "I'm trying to keep Azula safe."

"Like she needs that; that bitch can take care of herself," Sokka said. But then there was a pause. "Tui La, kid, is this Benell all over again? How many of my neighbors had to lose teeth before you finally figured out we weren't going to pick on her?"

"It's not like that," Ked said, heatedly.

"Oh, really? So you're telling me that you _haven't_ made Azula your surrogate sister, and tried to..."

"I'm in love with her."

Sokka's tirade came to a screeching halt, mid word. Sokka stared at Ked for a long time. He prepared to say something, but caught himself, rubbing his chin. He tried again, to the same result. He wiped his hand over his face, taking a calming breath. He slowly took the hammer off of the table and slipped it into his bag, then leaned forward, his hands gripped white-knuckle tight on the edges of the table.

"Could you repeat that, please?"

"I'm in love with Azula," Ked said.

"Huh. I thought the _crazy_ was just screwing with the acoustics," Sokka leaned back, pondering briefly. He cleared his throat, the most perplexed look on his face. "...How?"

"I knew from the moment I saw her that... there was something I couldn't ignore," Ked shook his head. "I'm not sure I understand it myself. I thought it was infatuation. For years, I was sure that as soon as she awoke, I would be able to just put it aside like the childish fancy it was. But when I look into her eyes, I can see that she needs somebody. Desperately. The loneliness is killing her."

"You do realize that the 'being with her' will kill _you_," Sokka asked.

"You don't know her."

"Oh, I think I know her fairly well," Sokka said. Sokka shook his head. "Aang made a mistake when he didn't neuter her."

Ked glared. "The only reason I didn't punch you again right now is because my hand still hurts."

"She's a manipulative demon. She's using you, bending you to her plans. Just like she always does. That woman doesn't have friends. She has puppets she can toy with at her mercy. And as you probably have noticed by now, mercy is one of those things she probably threw into a bonfire when she was five."

"Alright, now I know you're full of shit," Ked said, leaning back. "Considering your own wife visited her every other month since she was institutionalized. That sounds like something only a _friend_ would do," Sokka sat back, staring at Ked. "She didn't tell you? I can't say I'm surprised. You did tend to be hard headed."

"What was my wife doing with Azula?"

"Talking to her," Ked said, anger giving an edge to his voice. "Brushing her hair. Trying to make her alright. I have to say, Sokka, you've certainly got a wife well outside of your league."

"She knew what I was when she married me," Sokka said.

"I'm referring to the fact that she still believes people can heal, that in the blackness a candle burns brightly and in the desert a drop of rain is a miracle. You don't deserve her. You deserve somebody as bitter and hollow as you."

Which is when Sokka punched Ked in the face. Ked had seen it coming, but his mouth had outpaced his brain, and his jaw payed the price. The patrons turned again, some of them offering tutted laughter. Most annoyingly, Sokka didn't seem to be favoring his fist at all. "Don't talk about my wife or my marriage. You haven't got that right," Sokka said coldly. He waited until Ked retook his seat. "You should count yourself lucky. Before I came here, I had a nice long talk with that wife who according to you I don't deserve. She convinced me that it might be a good idea to actually talk to you. At least it wasn't a complete waste of time."

"Why are you even after us? It can't be because of the Fire Lord," Ked asked mushily, trying to ignore the pain in his face. A fighter, Ked was not.

"My master, Piandao, he was murdered. The same day Azula escaped," Ked leaned back. "You know something, don't you?"

"I know that Jeong Jeong mentioned something about 'finding information he needed' from somebody in Azul. He's got pretty much the only airship the Blue Flame has to work with, so he could definitely make it from Azul to Grand Ember in the same day," Ked said. Sokka's eyes flashed.

"Of course. He was killing off our kind before," Sokka said. "Why should he stop now? The big question is, why him?"

Ked frowned. "Wait. Wasn't he a big patron of the mental institute reform laws Zuko pressed for?"

Sokka nodded. "He had wealth and influence over some people who were suspicious of Zuko. So yeah, he had his fingers in a lot of pots. If he wanted to, he could really have called the shots at a lot of those places. But that still doesn't explain his connection to you."

"I don't understand."

"What are you going to do about Azula?" Sokka asked.

"I want to keep her safe. I need to."

Sokka shook his head. "You do realize that this isn't your little sister. She's not interested in making friends. World domination, definitely, but friends, not a chance," Sokka said.

"I'll take that under advisement," Ked got to his feet. Sokka's eyes narrowed. "You can try to stop me, but you're in the heart of Betla, and you have no allies. Not here. If you're still blood-drunk enough to try killing me, then by all means, try. But you won't survive the deed. I'm going to protect Azula. From everybody. Even you."

"I'm not blood drunk."

"Yes you are, Sokka. And that makes you a danger to just about everybody."

"It's not me you'll need to worry about," Sokka said idly.

"I'll protect Azula from the _Avatar _if I need to," Ked said, only mildly aware of how arrogant and insane that sounded.

"If that's what you need to do," Sokka said. "And for the record, I'm perfectly calm. Calm as when I won that Agni Kai."

"I thought Wang Fire..."

"Wang Fire won the first Agni Kai _without firebending_," Sokka clarified. "_I_ am the first non-firebender to win an Agni Kai," Ked stared at him. "Some pompous researcher at the Fire Academy didn't like it when I undercut his theory in five words and a doodle."

"These Nationals are nuts," Ked said with a head shake.

"Tell me about it."

Ked strode away, his body quivering in the anticipation of Sokka's strike. It didn't come. He strode forcefully away until he rounded a corner and slumped against a wall. His heart was hammering in his chest. He'd managed to talk his way out of certain death. That was a new experience. He looked up at the sun and realized that he was going to have to make a bit of haste. She'd already been down there, alone, with that 'Smellerbee' woman longer than he'd anticipated. He moved through the garrison at Betla, keeping his eyes down and staying out of the attentions of the soldiers pulling on that azure armor. A layman would mistake it for Water Tribe colors, but any Tribesman would know that Tribes wore soft, desaturated shades, the shades of the tides and rivers. This was a harsh, bright, and jarring blue. The blue of a fire too hot.

Ked moved past the soldiers and descended into the dungeons, quickly slipping through the door and closing it behind him. He could sense her before he saw her. Azula gave a start as he entered the room. Of course she would; it wasn't her energy in his body, it was the other way around. She raised a dark eyebrow at him.

"That didn't take long," Azula said somewhat sarcastically. Ked, instead of answering that comment, slid along the wall until he was on the bench. He wiped his hands over his face, then stared down at the table.

"That had to have been the most nerve-wracking cup of tea I've ever had in my entire life," Ked muttered.

And the rest was history.

* * *

As Azula followed Ked out of the dungeons, her disguise back in place, she had a notion, one which brought a smirk to her painted lips. "So, the hour of my destiny is at hand, Tribesman. You must be commended for being so... useful."

"I do what I can," Ked said distractedly, slowly peering around a corner. He shook his head. "So close. If they'd just get out of the damned way."

"I can think of a great many things I could offer as a reward," Azula said. All she had to do was get a measure of control again. Some leverage. Something.

"I'm sure you could, but right now probably isn't the time to think about that," Ked muttered. "Come on, you idiots. Move!"

"Oh, the things I could do for you, my _loyal_ servant," Azula whispered into his ear. Ked turned, somewhat flabbergasted. "I reward those who serve me well. So what do you want."

"Can we talk about this some other time?" Ked asked, eyes wide and voice strangled.

"And why would I do that?"

"Well, for starters, we're kind of in the belly of the beast, here. And second, I'm pretty sure you don't like me very much, so I'm beginning to think that you've got something else in mind than–"

Azula interrupted him by sticking her tongue down his throat. He let out a sound somewhere approaching that of a dying mouse. Strangely, this was _much_ more enjoyable than that forgettable experience on Lesser Ember six years ago. Still, she broke away, and Ked slid down the wall to the floor, his legs splayed before him. Azula stood over him.

"I... bwah... glahr..." Ked stammered. Azula, smirking with smugness, reached down and patted him on the cheek.

"That's a good boy," she said, her voice saccharine enough to come from Ty Lee. That kiss certainly had. If Azula couldn't control him through fear, then she would control him through lust. He was a young man. It would be easy. She quickly leaned around the corner, and found it vacant. "Now don't get yourself killed while I undercut Long Feng again, alright?"

Ked muttered something in his barbarian tongue as she walked away, quietly grabbing the death's-head helmet and vanishing into obscurity amongst the masses. Today would be her crowning glory. Not only was _she _going to be the one who emancipated her father from his imprisonment – since she was the only person she trusted could actually pull it off – the speech she would give would not exactly be what they expected. Hidden in her disguise as she moved with the other soldiers onto the boat, she did nothing to contain her triumphant smirk.

* * *

Jeong Jeong stood at the table, shooting his counterpart a glare. That he and Long Feng didn't like each other was a matter of public record. If only those fools knew how far back that hatred had started, it would blow their collective minds. The Easterner turned and pointed at the map of the capital, once called Sozin City, but renamed after some dead martyr of the last conflict.

"I still think this is a waste of time and resources," Long Feng said.

"We need to send a clear message, one which the peoples of Ember will understand," Jeong Jeong answered, glaring at his Eastern counterpart.

"What they choose to believe is of trifling importance. We should focus our efforts on toppling Zuko, not gallivanting about, searching for his predecessor."

Jeong Jeong rolled his eyes. "Ozai is a husk of a man, bereft of power in anything save for his name. He is only half the mind he assumes he is. We will use him to grant this movement legitimacy, then discard him at the first available opportunity. I have no doubt that you are planning to do much the same to his daughter?" Jeong Jeong asked.

"I see no point in casting aside a still-useful asset," Long Feng said. "She is manipulable and therefore valuable. And I will admit there is a certain level of enjoyment I derive from having that woman dance to my tune," Long Feng said. Of course, he was operating off of obsolete information. Jeong Jeong knew about Azula's true condition. She was not helpless. The daughter of Ozai never was.

"Enough of this. We must focus on the task at hand," Jeong Jeong cut in. The many eyes in the tent were wide, nobody willing to interrupt the two who were sparring verbally. Their silence betrayed their solid instinct for self-preservation. At the end of today, if everything went well, Jeong Jeong would be within a hairsbreadth of what he had been working towards for the last forty years.

"Everything is in place?" Long Feng asked. Jeong Jeong grunted with a nod.

"They will be arriving in a few hours," the Firemaster answered. Long Feng smiled, then, a cunning, brutal smile.

"Good. Send word to my agent. Unleash Trama."

* * *

Han Hua, former Secretariat of the Outer Ring of Ba Sing Se, shooed the messenger hawk and unfurled its cargo. The scroll was in the concise, clear script of his master, and laid out his orders clearly. Han smirked; not so long ago, he had been tasked with preserving this city. Now, he was finally given license to tear it to the ground. Strange what bedfellows a threat of planetary destruction could make.

Han reached over and cuffed the child standing next to him in the side of the head. It was not his preferred method, entirely too brutish and uncivilized, but it had been made clear that Trama did not respond to normal stimulus the way human beings should. "Trama. The battle is joined. Attack," Han Hua said.

Trama was a pathetic sight. Barely into the teenage years, it was hard to tell – if not completely impossible – to tell if Trama were a boy or girl. The hair was shaved short, and the features androgynous. Each eye was also a different shade of green. Han pondered if those indicated that Trama was some illegitimate offspring of King Bumi; it would certainly explain Trama's capabilities. Trama looked up at the city around him, then back up to Han Hua.

"Tear down the road. No reinforcements from the Crater," Han said. Trama's face screwed into a rictus of utter wrath, and with a high-pitched shriek, Trama lashed forward to that road, hands formed into claws, and ripped downward. Han watched as the entire wall of the Crater trembled, and the whole, mile-long switchback dissolved into cascading rocks. Han smirked. "Very good. Now, you need to..."

Trama turned and lashed out again. This time, a wave of earth smashed upward, hurling an entire building into the air and having it crash down hard somewhere else in the lower city. Trama then began to bend and obliterate, without target or restraint or sanity. Han Hua stood stock still, watching the madness as Trama ran screaming down a side street. He let out a low, annoyed sigh.

"Of course, things _had_ to get difficult, didn't they?" Han Hua asked nobody in particular.

* * *

There was pandemonium in the palace, as the very earth that the Royal Palace stood upon was quivering. Mai stumbled, slightly, pain radiating through her body. It was a familiar pain: she'd endured it before. But never in circumstances such as these. She grabbed the arm of a soldier running past the intersection where she had stopped to catch her breath.

"Where is the Fire Lord?" she demanded. The soldier stopped, recognized her, then bowed. Mai rolled her grey eyes. "I don't have time for this. Where is my husband?"

"Nobody's sure," the soldier said. "The attackers are everywhere."

"Then send somebody to find him," Mai said darkly. She released the infantryman and leaned against the wall, her vision unfocusing for a moment as a wave of pain coursed through her. "Of all the times I could have picked to give birth," she muttered.

There was a stomping that approached, the heavy feet and clawed talons of Chong Sheng announcing her presence long before she appeared. In truth, nobody knew what gender the dragon was, and nobody had the courage to check. Mai noted that it acted more the protective mother than the territorial bull, so thought of it as a female. The great beast pulled its serpentine body through the halls, reaching forward with one whisker which it laid onto her arm.

Fear. The blue ones cause harm. Must keep the she safe.

Dragons did not communicate in any true language, however, they were intelligent beings, and had other means. They could implant thoughts, if thoughts which were in odd context and took some mental legwork to understand. She focused her mind on a single image, the broad scar across the left eye. And she sent out her own question, loudly in her mind. Where? The dragon recoiled for a moment, then touched her again.

A forest of stone, hard black soil. Flames, the ceiling.

The throne room. What was he doing there?

"Go and protect him," Mai said. "I can look after myself."

A lie, in her condition. Azuli women were only ever unarmed in three instances; if they were bathing, so that they wouldn't ruin their weapons; when they were romantically engaged, so as to prevent accidents; and in the last weeks of pregnancy, so that when they gave birth, they would not have the means to stab somebody. That last proviso, it was said, was a later entry, only included after a rash of bedside-stabbings. Chong Sheng looked at her with a level of disbelief that was evident even on a dragon, but she glared, and it turned, heading down another passage.

"I will not have my children grow up without a father," Mai said grimly.

* * *

Azula reveled.

The fight up the mountainside would have been utter suicide with the Crater Road demolished, but since that wasn't where the bulk of the forces were headed, it didn't slow them down at all. The only real thing which Azula didn't like about being in disguise was that she had to actively reduce her firebending; her blue flames, the pinnacle of firebending power the likes of which was only seen twice in a thousand years, would give her away in a heartbeat. When there were only two people who could do such a thing, and one of them was the Fire Lord, it was bound to raise questions.

The trip to the mainland had been cramped, stinking, and surrounded by the lowest class of people. But still, the payoff, to be able to _fight_ again, it was worth any price. Azula always knew that she wasn't destined for a life of courtiership, of making deals and working diplomacy. Ever since she was a child, she had been drawn to the flame, and drawn to the fight. Azula was a warrior, and nothing would change that. Not destiny nor prophecy nor conspiracy. Contrary even to her own memories, her mother supported her in this; to find her own destiny, not at the point of a pen, but at the point of a blade.

Azula advanced with the men and women who wore that blue armor, advancing in the name of Jeong Jeong, 'Azula', and the former Fire Lord. Even the closest soldier to her was far enough away that she had some room to breathe; firebenders did not group together. There was no need to. And since the armor of her opponents allowed her ample opportunity to let loose without too much worry about killing them, Azula got to vent all of her frustration and anger that she had been building up for the last few weeks.

There wasn't quite as much as she expected.

Ashfall was coming close. She could see its hunkered mass against the collapsed wall of a dormant volcano. She would have to pick up the pace if she was going to get there first, and she definitely had to be there first. The soldiers on this path were surprised to see her, at the vanguard of the force. In her disguise, she looked like just any soldier, but when the first red-armored form lashed forth in a bolt of red flame, she disabused him harshly. Her own flame, a stream shifting between yellow and green, blasted through his attack and smashed him away. He landed roughly, which brought an inward wince to her, despite herself. He was still moving, though, if removed from the fight. Not dead. Good. A smirk on her face, she advanced toward Ashfall.

* * *

Ty Lee stood at the edge of what used to be the Crater Road, before it had dissolved into rubble. She stared down at the carnage taking place in the city with a sinking heart. This couldn't be happening. She simply _couldn't_ be watching as her second home was being smashed to the ground in waves of rolling rock. She bounded into the air, snapping open her glider and soaring down at the epicenter of those shocks which sowed destruction everywhere they went.

She landed amidst rubble, fires, and screaming. She knew that she couldn't do everything, that if she tried to divide herself too far, to attend every person trapped or hurt, then the only thing that would come of it was more destruction. She had a particular set of skills and a role she knew she had to embrace; she had to stop the one who was causing this damage.

"If I were an earthbender, where would I hide?" Ty Lee asked herself. An utterly ridiculous question, since she was about as much an earthbender as her husband was a firebender, but she knew she had to find whoever was doing this, and soon. She began to bound from pile of rubble to pile of rubble, only slightly depending on her airbending; she had been an acrobat long before she ever started airbending. Although, it was tough to say if one was not the result of the other, and which direction it went was anybody's guess.

She came upon the bleeding edge of that destruction by accident, almost leaping into a building before checking herself and dropping to the ground. She looked around, wishing that she had Mai's keen eyes to help her. As it was, she could only see that the destruction ended here, but not why, or how. She began to hear weeping, a child crying. And no amount of hardening of the heart – a skill at which Ty Lee was remarkably poor – would see her ignore that call. She moved quietly and gently toward its source, a filthy child with short hair, curled up on the street. She snapped her glider shut, so as to keep it out of the way, and leaned down to the child.

"Are you alright, little boy?" Ty Lee asked. The child didn't turn to her. She moved around, and wondered if she'd gotten the gender right. It could have been either. "We should get you out of here. It's too dangerous to be out here right now.

The boy/girl recoiled from Ty Lee's touch, the sobbing quieting for a moment, the mismatched green eyes staring at nothing. Ty Lee glanced around, then tried to see what had upset the child so. It could be just about anything. On a hunch, she took a look at the child's aura, to see if it was fear, pain, or loss.

It was nothing.

The child had no aura. Ty Lee took a step back, her brown eyes growing wide. Only two kinds of people didn't have auras. The dead had no auras as they had no souls. The mad had no auras as they had very little left in the way of minds. The child was insane.

"_Kill the woman_," a voice said in Tianxia from somewhere nearby. The child erupted to its feet with a feral roar, the sound coming from its throat not even remotely human, as it thrust its fists toward Ty Lee. And it seemed the entire neighborhood launched with it.

"...oh no," Ty Lee said quietly, as the stone began to launch toward her.

* * *

Ozai sat, as he had for six years, in the cage, waiting for the end. For all Zuko's lofty promises, it had amounted to nothing more than a protracted incarceration. If the boy had any stomach whatsoever, he would have had Ozai publicly executed, the way a real man deals with his enemies, not hidden in the background like a shameful secret. Although, considering some of the particulars about Zuko's birth and raising, it would come as no surprise that the boy still considered Ozai a dark secret.

Much of Ozai's physique had left him during that long sentence. He wasn't the impressive physical specimen that he was before. But he was still always ready. Just because he couldn't firebend – and damn the Avatar for ten thousand generations for that blasphemy – didn't mean that he was utterly helpless. He still had his body, his mind, and his name. And he had a plan. Admittedly, a plan that was essentially worthless while Ozai was behind bars, but that would not always be the case, and when he was free, oh, how Zuko's world would burn.

Ozai's attention perked out of delicious thoughts of infanticide when he heard the thump of flame, and a cry of pain, a clattering of a body to the floor. More cries, these ones of alarm, and more flares of fire, more thumps. Something was coming. Ozai got to his feet. Whatever it was, he would face it like a man, not a sniveling coward. There was a clattering at the door, and a momentary profanity, before a bright flare of fire erupted inside the lock to the outer door of Ozai's cell, and the door swung open. There was somebody standing at the threshold, looking like an Imperial firebender, but the armor was electric blue instead of red. Ozai scowled.

"Aren't you a bit short to be a guard?" he mocked. The soldier tensed its hands briefly, before taking a few steps closer.

"I'm surprised you don't recognize me," the soldier said, tone singsong. Ozai's expression became one of shock. The soldier removed her helmet, and showed her face. A smirk pulled at painted lips. "In case you forgot, _Father_, my name is Azula, and I'm here to rescue you."

Ozai stared at her for a moment, having gotten over his initial confusion. "You are late," Ozai said harshly. "I expect better of you."

"The only reason we are speaking at all is because I welded the doors shut behind me. To give me a bit of... time," Azula said. "The soldiers do not know that I am here. You will be sure that continues. You will not mention to anybody of my presence. You will go with the soldiers to the boat and head for Betla without comment, is that clear?"

"And when did you get the idea that you would be able to command your father?" Ozai asked angrily.

"When you ended up inside an iron cell, and I ended up outside it," she answered. She took a step forward, igniting a lancet of that glorious blue flame from her fingers and sheering through the lock to the inner cell. The door swung open easily. "Dress yourself. We are leaving."

Ozai stared at his daughter briefly. So much like her mother. The very notion made him a little bit sick. She pulled her helm back over her head and pulled the cloak off of one of the incapacitated guards. He scowled in contempt. She didn't even have the guts to kill them. What a worthless child. He had made it only half way down the corridor when the door at the far end finally burst open, and a number of other soldiers in that electric blue armor flowed into the room. They moved toward Ozai, fists raised, but Azula intercepted them.

"The Phoenix King has been released," she said, only barely disguising her voice. She could do so much better. The soldiers took her word at face value and moved to surround Ozai. Finally, he thought with a smirk. A proper escort. He had missed the pomp of his rank in the last six years. That, and the willing, or not so willing, women which were a quiet perk of it. In one of the outer chambers, the firebenders and soldiers were milling around a side room, which caught Azula's attention. "What is the meaning of this?"

"You've secured Ozai?" came the answer. "Good. Now we can move on to the primary targets."

"I was not informed about any targets other than the previous Fire Lord," Azula said suspiciously. Ozai kept walking, leaving her behind.

"He is a secondary objective. The reason we're here is to infiltrate the Royal Palace and kill the royal family. We're told there's a direct path from here to the bunker under the Palace."

"Kill the royal family?" Azula asked. Azula gave Ozai a glance. Ozai rolled his eyes. Remember your place, girl! But to his great disappointment, she failed him yet again. She snapped a command to bring Ozai to the ships, and she turned down that side passage. Vengeance clouding her vision yet again. She was a perpetual failure. But she _was_ a useful one.

* * *

Mai was running. She knew she shouldn't have been running in her condition. Her water was broken and she was giving birth, but she couldn't stop. Not now. Not until all the people she cared about were safe. She powered through another painful contraction, hating once again that she had, by her custom, given aside her weaponry for this day. She was not alone in the halls. People in blue armor were sowing destruction in their wake.

"And I just spent all that time and effort redecorating," Mai said dryly, standing with her back to a wall, glancing around a corner. Of course they would burn the silk hangings. She moved silently and quickly, although without nearly the speed she was once capable of, across that hallway, leaving the three to their pillage. There wasn't much she could do about it.

The throne room was not far, but she could already see the telltale signs of battle. Charred blue armor, corpses within, lay on the black floors, their blood slick but invisible. The howling roars of Chong Sheng echoed through the Palace. She doubted anybody would be named Dragon today, but it was hard going, and the loyal beast would have done her great service. She tried to get more speed, but her legs betrayed her, and her uterus as well. A stabbing of pain shot through her, like she'd been knifed in the belly. Just a contraction, but they were very close together, now. She knew what was coming next.

"Not yet," Mai hissed, trying to pull herself to her feet, to ignore the fact that she was giving birth. She heard footfalls behind her, and a glance confirmed her fears. Two of those three had come, and were looking down at her with grins of murder on their faces. "Let me guess? You're not here to play midwife?"

"We're here for your head, whore," the soldier said. It pulled a sword with a wicked, inward curve, and advanced toward her. Mai pulled herself to her feet. Even if she couldn't beat him, she would not die like a coward. She would die as an Azuli.

Still, it was a pleasant surprise when it was not she who was doing the dying. A knife shot past Mai's shoulder and struck him squarely between the eyes. The blade was embedded, but not deeper than needed to make his eyes widen in horror. It was the next knife, which sunk into his then-exposed neck that made the man topple. The other raced forward, surging through a basic firebending Kata. But before the fire surged away from his fists, a young woman ran past Mai and hurled a vase which was probably five hundred years old at the least into his face. It smashed into his face, pulping it somewhat, and miraculously, didn't brake when it hit the stone floors. The woman turned around, and grey eyes met grey eyes.

"That was timely," Mai said.

"Of course. He wasn't playing midwife, but I am," she said.

Mai showed a small smile for her attendant. Zuko, panicky dork that he was, assigned Mai an attendant each of the three times she'd been pregnant. This time, she beat him to the punch and selected an Azuli girl heading through medical school in the Fire Academy. "Where is my husband, Onji?" she asked. Of course, just then, another twist of pain in her nethers. This was becoming unbearable.

"Come with me," Onji said, helping Mai limp into the Burning Throne. More corpses, most wearing the electric blue armor. Some weren't, though. One figure was apart from that mass, the phoenix flare lopsided on his head, his robes singed and torn. Zuko. He was still alive. And he was holding the inconsolably weeping Yuuki.

Zuko lit up the instant Mai came into his line of sight. "Mai! You're alright! I was panicking..."

"Now," Mai said, the pain dragging her voice away from its cool detachment and into something approaching worry. Zuko's eyes widened. Mai looked around. "Where's Kimiko?"

"I thought she was with you!"

Mai turned, to hunt their young daughter down herself, but this time, the pain drove Mai to her knees with a cry. "She's still out there," Mai wheezed.

"No..." Zuko said. His gaze slowly became hard and harsh. He carefully pushed Yuuki to arm's length. "You're going to have to stay here with Mama. You can do that, right?"

"I'm scared," Yuuki said through tears.

"So am I, penguin, so am I," he said. Pet names, of course. Zuko took his elder daughter to Mai's side, as she was lowered to the ground behind the burning throne. There was no way in save through the open doors, and that was a killing floor. Zuko panickedly planted a kiss on Mai's sweat-covered brow. "I'll be back soon, Mai. I want to see my third child."

"I'm not going anywhaaaaaagh!" Mai cut off with a pant. Her attendant moved in as Zuko began to sprint away. "How is it?"

"You're giving birth," Onji noted sarcastically.

"You've done this before, right?" Mai asked, her breathing fast and hard.

"...Do you really want the truth?"

* * *

Katara danced through the carnage, her waterbending slamming people with blue armor aside like leaves in the gale of a storm. In her years as a grandmaster waterbender, she had learned that while there were many styles employing much more skill, poise, and precision than her own, the South Style, as she taught it, was the most powerful. It didn't use precision. It used power. I didn't demand poise, it used brutality. And what skill it employed stood so opposite the aesthetically pleasing forms of the North that it was once called by its detractors as 'more brutish streetfighting than waterbending'.

And Katara smiled as she showed what streetfighting was good for. She spun through the men who tried to rush and overwhelm her, her wave of water slamming and tripping and bullrushing those who went against her. From the corner of her eye, she saw one readying a bow. She reached out with one hand, feeling the water inside his body. She squeezed, and he let out a scream of unmatched agony, dropping to the floor as his skin cracked and started to bleed. It wasn't lethal, but it was extremely painful. It was like bloodbending, but not. That, she reserved for the one whom she could feel taking a run at her with a sword. With her other hand, she made a back handing motion, and every droplet of moisture in his body obeyed, dashing him against a wall. The throneroom was near. That was where she heard they had been seen. But there was a force that had burst those doors, milling its way up the floor, pressing back the meager defenses. They would be overwhelmed soon.

Not if she had anything to say about it.

"Let's see Hama top this," Katara said viciously, abandoning the free water she had ringing around her. She reached high, at their unwary backs, and her fingers crooked as though tugging at strings. She was the greatest waterbender in the world. There were almost twenty men and women ahead of her. So much water. She tore her hands down, and screams of pain and discomfort joined, as those people were dragged down to their knees.

The soldiers stared at her, stunned, while Katara smiled, the kind of smile her brother sometimes showed, but not quite. It wasn't quite blood drunk. But it was reveling in the power, unleashed. "What's happening?" Mai's agonized voice came from behind the throne. The survivors in short order had the enemy truncheoned down, allowing her to release the bloodbending and move to Mai's side. To the Fire Lady's other side was her elder daughter, her face buried in Mai's shoulder, shivering slightly. Yuuki was a delicate girl, this had to be taxing for her. Mai didn't look so great, but then again, Katara hadn't spent much time around people giving birth in the last few years, so she wasn't the best judge. "Are you alright?"

"I'm giving birth, do you think I'm alright?" Mai said sarcastically, before letting out a long hiss of pain. "Gods, the last two weren't like this."

"You weren't in the middle of a fight," the attendant said from 'twixt Mai's legs. "I can see the crown. It'll be here soon."

Katara and Mai shared a glance. An understanding passed between them. No harm would come to that child. With her brow drawn down, she took her place in the center of that room. None would pass, save over her corpse.

* * *

Zuko was still screaming, trying to find his child. It was a dumb thing to do, with soldiers crawling the palace, looking to murder him. Dumb as a dictator. But exactly what a father should. He smashed open doors, quickly checking those tight places Kimiko would have hidden herself. If she would have hidden herself. A horrifying image had come into Zuko's head the instant he heard she was missing, that she had tried to fight them. The terror that he would find her little body broken and lifeless, it spurred him on into a desperate madness.

So much so that he didn't expect when a fist rounded corner and caught him right in the temple. Zuko was lifted from his feet and thrown down the hall, skidding to a stop. Zuko felt nauseous from the force of that hit, and it took him a long moment to get his bearings, and even longer to start trying to get to his feet. And the man who punched him was not alone.

One was a giant of a man, cracking sunken knuckles as he advanced. He said something to his companions which Zuko didn't catch, and laughed. The others began to spread out, encircling him, fists out at the ready. Firebenders. Ordinarily, Zuko would have been able to take them all without so much as a glance. Now, though, he'd just taken a head wound. It was hard to focus. It was hard to stand up straight.

One of them began to leap forward, but changed direction mid air, his eyes growing wide, before he was blasted down the hall at remarkable speed, not hitting the floor until after slamming into the far wall. Zuko had only started his attack when a streak in discolored bright yellow shot past him, kicking a shining steel staff into the face of another before landing a pair of swift jabs into the chest and side of another. Both curled up like burnt caterpillars, one from a bow to the head, the other from the crippling Dim Mak strikes.

Oddly, the thing which stuck out most to Zuko was that Ty Lee was not smiling.

She caught her staff as it bounced back to her, twisting it in half and using it to block and dodge around the giant, while Zuko very carefully, very deliberately formed his sloppy attack into a blast of force, its shockwave hurling the last assailant through a door into a linen cupboard. Zuko turned, to try to give aid to the shockingly fast airbender, but she had things well in hand, circling the giant on a ball of solid air, striking his away from punishing blows, as she waited for her moment. He expected it to end with her delivering one last flurry of blows with her bisected staff, but instead, she moved away, then made a yanking motion, like hurling a heavy sack over her shoulder.

A puff of white vapor came out of the giant's throat, and he fell to his knees, clutching at his throat. She held, as his eyes went wide, a hand extended toward her, that white vapor just ahead of his face. He slumped forward onto the ground, his eyes rolling back. Only then, did Ty Lee release whatever it was she'd done.

"What did you...?" Zuko asked, starting to get some clarity returning to his head. Ty Lee turned to him. Her clothes were discolored, it turned out, because she had a bad gash on her scalp and she was bleeding onto them.

"I took his breath away," she said with a bright grin. "Don't worry, I gave it back before it did any lasting harm."

Zuko stared at her. "Remind me not to anger you."

"Oh, like you even could," Ty Lee said, giving Zuko a very brief, if very tight, hug, before grabbing his hand. "Come on, Mai's filled me in. We have to find Kimi!"

* * *

Azula came to a stop at the circle of people, all tightly packed. She elbowed her way through them, and saw at their heart, its source. A grey eyed young boy, maybe nine years old at the most. He was holding a long knife, running red, and one of the soldiers was still on the ground. Clinging tight to his back was a girl no older than three; a girl, screaming at them with all the gusto of a child who hadn't yet learned to swear.

"Talk about your lucky breaks," one of the men said. "The Fire Lord's daughter and the Fire Lady's brother at the same time."

"They'll make excellent hostages," Azula agreed. The man turned back to her.

"Hostages? Shit, no. Orders are to kill on sight."

Azula glared at him from inside her helmet. "They are children."

"Not mine. Not my problem," he pulled out a short axe and took a step toward the boy, who spun to confront the soldier. There was no way. The knife wouldn't reach. Tahm-Tahm. So this was what Tahm-Tahm had become. Brave. Defending on his feet 'till the end. A true Azuli. Azula felt that heat lick at her soul again. Rage. No, this went so far beyond rage and wrath that she emerged on the other side. To kill one's enemies... that was one thing. But children?

She grasped the soldier on the shoulder and spun him, driving her other fist into his chestplate, and as she did, she detonated the air between them. It drove her back a step, but it punched him straight through a wall. She twisted with an arc, not bothering to curtail herself in any way. Blue flame seared from her heel, knocking one side of the grisly audience away, before she launched a fire blast which sent one, flying and smoldering, down the hall to an intersection a not inconsiderable distance away. Those not knocked down bowled past the children, knocking Tahm-Tahm aside and swinging a blow at her legs. She punched out, another blast sending him flying, but her restrictive helmet blinded her to another blow coming from behind, which dazed her for a moment, and sent her helmet rolling to the floor, a dent in its side.

When those assembled saw what they were doing, she liked to think that they wet themselves in panic. With a roar of what some would call righteous anger, she bent and fought, moving in a tight circle over the two children, her attacks deflecting what fire came their way and responding with overwhelming power. For just a few sweet seconds, as she fought that admittedly one sided battle, outnumbered though she was, she felt something... something she didn't know how to classify.

"This is right," Ursa's voice said quietly. "This is good."

"Not now, Mother!" Azula shouted, before delivering one last rippling shockwave, which leveled the few remaining attempted-child-murderers and sent them sliding down the hall. And at the end of that hall, standing in comfusion and awe... were her brother, and Ty Lee.

Zuko stared at her. Ty Lee stared at her. Azula stared back. There was a good distance between them. The two children were huddling close to her, their unexpected savior. She looked at them. The girl. She was exactly what Azula would have predicted in offspring between Zuko and Mai. As the soldier had said, their daughter. Right at Azula's feet. And Azula had saved her life. Why had she done that? It was politically expedient to remove all – no. No, it wasn't. She interrupted that thought even as she was having it. Even if it made sense to remove the children, that was blood she would not have on her hands. It wasn't right. She might not have been much of a judge of right and wrong – especially since her _father_ had drilled it into her head over and over that there was no such thing as either – but she knew that it was _wrong_. She looked back up at the two at the end of the hall. They were waiting. Staring at her and waiting, no doubt in fear of what she would do. Fitting. She was a monster, after all. But even monsters have standards. Azula reached down and grabbed her helmet.

"Go to your father, little girl," Azula said. The girl looked up at Azula, then quickly hugged her leg, before running toward Zuko. Tahm-Tahm didn't even waste so much time. She slipped on her helmet, and then started running. Oddly, the two didn't follow her. It didn't matter. She had fulfilled her objective. Ozai was free. Now, she had a rendezvous to make.

* * *

Long Feng's teeth were so tight that they might well shatter at any moment. He glared at his opposite, the man who he had layers of plans set in place to kill at the proper opportunity. Jeong Jeong glared back, dark golden eyes locking with green. "What do you mean, _you cannot find the Princess_?" Long Feng asked. And Jeong Jeong looked just as furious as he.

* * *

Ty Lee looked... conflicted as Azula had run away. Like she wanted to run after her, but with a sound which ought never come out of Ty Lee's mouth, a growl, she turned and dragged the children and the Fire Lord back to the Royal Palace. The attack was dying down as quickly as it had started. People were dead. Mostly theirs. Some were captured. Entirely theirs. Zuko still felt a little unsteady on his feet. He was going to have to see a doctor about that blow he'd taken. The halls leading to the Burning Throne had been cleared, not by mortal efforts, but by a large, angry dragon bodily shoving anything it didn't want nearby out of its path. Chong Sheng let out a sound which, though bestial, sounded with both relief and joy. It reached out a whisker, and Zuko felt its thoughts course into him.

Little Father safe, joy. His she inside, safe. Blue men gone. Tasty.

"Well, try not to make a habit of it," Zuko said, walking past the new and old national animal of the Fire Nation. It lifted up the coil of its body that had blocked the door, letting Ty Lee, Zuko, and the children duck under. Ty Lee looked up, questioning. "You don't want to know."

"Is she alright?" Ty Lee asked.

"Yeah," Zuko said. He finally had a moment to think, running a hand along Kimi's hair, he finally turned to the airbender. "What happened to you, anyway? You don't look so good."

"I got into a fight with an earthbender," Ty Lee said. "A really _really_ strong one."

"So?"

"S/he got away. Well, s/he stopped fighting after s/he dropped a building on me," she said with surprising chirpiness, considering what she'd said. Katara, looking the best off of anybody in the room, shot the four new arrivals a smile, and nodded toward the back of the room. "I've had worse."

Zuko shot her a baffled look. It was about then that he realized that there was relative quiet in the room. Assuming the worst, since that's how Zuko's luck tended to run, he quickly broke away from the children and ran to the back of the throne. He dropped to his knees, seeing Mai on her back, propped up against one of the pillars for the throne. She was smiling down at a little person, who was flailing about its tiny arms, letting out low, but steady cries. She looked up at him, a genuine, warm smile on her sweat-covered face.

"It's a boy," she said. Zuko's face pulled into a grin, and he held his wife close. And a second later, exactly as Zuko predicted, Ty Lee joined them, with a joyous squee.

* * *

Ked didn't like the way that people were moving around Betla. Yesterday, the force had shipped out to the mainland of the West Continent, and by now they would be en route to their return, but at some point, a quiet, subtle alarm had been raised. Nobody would admit to anything, but they were scouring the fortress on the island from top to bottom, and then extending their gaze to the outlying regions, to the caves and the small township at the cove. The Tribesman had a faint idea what this was about, and it concerned him.

"They're looking for her, aren't they?" Sokka's voice startled Ked so completely that he walked into a wall. Sokka's braying laughter sounded as Ked pulled himself back to his feet.

"What are you doing here?" Ked asked.

"Saw a ruckus, thought I might get involved," Sokka said easily, sitting in a window sill overlooking a courtyard. In the sky, the full moon was just beginning to rise against the sun edging below the horizon. "Man, coming back here brings back memories."

"I'm sure it does. If anybody sees you here, they're going to kill you," Ked pointed out.

"They can try."

"What do you really want, Sokka? We're dancing on a knife's edge as it is."

Sokka got a pensive look. "I've given some thought to that little talk we had. You must realize I'm not my sister. When she gets an opinion, there's pretty much nothing on this planet that'll shake it. Ironic she's the paragon of water, then. Me? I'm a bit more mutable. What are you trying to do to Azula?"

"Do to? I'm just trying to get her healthy," Ked said. "I'm beginning to think that you never knew her when she was in her right mind. Something happened to that woman when she was very young, and I know she's strong enough to move past it."

"You put a lot of faith in that woman," Sokka said. "You'd better hope you're not just seeing what she wants you to see. She's very good at manipulating people, Ked. She didn't take over Ba Sing Se by arm-wrestling Long Feng into submission."

Ked didn't have a response for that. He only had his gut, and his gut told him that Azula had more to her than anger and fear. Ked glanced down, then back to Sokka. "She deserves better than what she's gotten. Something happened to her and it hurt her badly. I just want her to be alright. Is that so much to ask?"

"Considering its target?" Sokka asked. He shrugged. "Fine. If you're going to pursue this, then by all means, and don't say I didn't warn you," his easy smile faded. "But for the record, I'm going to have my eye on you. If you can get her to be less of a raging bitch, then all power to you. But if she takes one step backwards, acts one foot out of line; if she shows any sign of being that psychopath who murdered the Avatar over Ba Sing Se, I promise you, you won't need to worry about her _mental_ health anymore. Are we clear?"

Ked glared at his countryman, before turning and walking away. He didn't wonder how Sokka had got there, and he didn't wonder how he'd get away. That was somebody else's problem. Briefly, he wandered the fortress, his mind grinding some dark, worried thoughts. As he passed another window a short while later, he caught himself short. Below, coming up the path, was a column of soldiers, and a dark haired man in a red cloak at their heart. The column was singing war hymns loudly, almost enough that Ked could understand them at that great distance, but not quite. So the task-force had returned. He wondered which amongst them was Azula.

This was a bad plan. He just knew it.

Ked moved down into the courtyard, which was already playing host to the two masterminds of the conspiracy, as well as Jeong Jeong's hired goons. The column flared out, acting the honor guard for Ozai, who stood tall and proud. Suddenly, Ked could feel Azula's presence again, standing somewhere nearby.

Ozai looked the two men up and down, disregarding Long Feng almost instantly. "So, my loyal Firemaster, we meet again at long last," Ozai said, his voice low.

"Indeed," Jeong Jeong answered. "The plans to release you hit some unexpected snags. But as you can see, everything followed according to the scenario at the end."

"Spare me your prattle, Jeong Jeong," Ozai said. Long Feng gave a glance to some place which didn't seem to be occupied, but Ked could assume better. "I have been out of the world a long time. I intend to retake my place."

"Would that you could," Long Feng interrupted. Ozai's gaze swung to him, burning hot as though to make up for the fact that he was no utterly incapable of firebending. "Unfortunately, when you were made prisoner, it was a the behest of the Avatar. Only the Fire Lord could grant pardon and restitution for that."

Ked pondered that briefly. Oh, it was clever. Leaving Ozai effectively worthless, while desperate, since he could have no authority save if the Fire Lord gave it to him. A cruel and cunning strategy, but what was its ends? Ked was about to ponder more, when one soldier with a dented helm stripped it off, revealing a wave of lustrous black hair and a pair of blazing gold eyes, almost identical to Ozai's.

"How fortunate then, that one is available," Azula said haughtily. Ked's eyes grew wide. What was she doing?

"Princess, this is..." Jeong Jeong began, but Ozai silenced him with a wave of his hand. Old habits died hard, it would seem.

"I want to hear this," Ozai said. Azula smirked. It was the smirk of the victorious, the champion. "Please, continue, my darling daughter."

"Six years ago you were unjustly cast down by the Avatar at what should have been the Fire Nation's moment of glory and victory," Azula said loudly, letting her voice carry through the courtyard. "He emptied the seat of the Phoenix King and had his lackeys install an incompetent, soft-hearted lackwit in the place of your chosen successor," her, of course. "He acted out of turn, having no authority in matters of internal national politics, and in doing so, inauthorized his claims of adhering to any form of jurisprudence. He overreached himself, and acted as a petty, nepotistic tyrant. And this will be remedied."

Ozai grinned. "Go on, Azula."

Long Feng seemed to positively seethe as she took her place in front of her father. "As the chosen successor of Fire Lord Ozai, I have all of the rights and responsibilities levied by that position. With that authority, I rescind the sentence of life imprisonment lowered upon the former Fire Lord Ozai by the false Fire Lord Zuko."

"Excellent," Ozai said. He turned, his arms opening, as he prepared to speak, but Azula's smirk dissolved into cold anger.

"However," she interrupted. He glanced over his shoulder to her. "I have done nothing but remove a punishment not truly earned nor properly punished. Your actions leading up to and resulting from your being cast down are not beyond consideration. Your doctrine of Burnt Earth was foolhardy and reckless; your policies of testing chemical weapons against Embiar civilians was beyond the pale. As Fire Lord, I declare you a War Criminal, who's incompetence nearly brought our nation to the point of ruin. Thus, I declare you banished and exiled from this Fire Nation for the remainder of your life."

Ozai's jaw set tight, and his eyes seemed to be bugging out of his head.

"I once respected your ability to lead, but you have fallen far short of those lessons which you had taught. If you cannot heed your own direction, then you are a false prophet, as well as a failure as Fire Lord. You will leave the West Continent, and any lands associated with it, by the first craft willing to bear your dishonorable presence. Any return will be punished by immediate execution," Azula smiled then, a cherubic, sweet smile, and she leaned to Ozai's side. In whispered Tianxia, pitched barely high enough for Ked to hear, she added. "_It's just politics, __Father__. Nothing personal_."

Ozai ground his teeth, staring down at his daughter for a long minute. Then, with a look of barely controlled wrath on his features, he muttered. "Well played."

"Please, you barely even remember the rules," Azula said snidely. She turned to Jeong Jeong and Long Feng with a smirk. In one glorious moment, she had shown them her true nature, that like an ideal gas, she would not be restrained, but expand to fill whatever space contained her. "If today's business has concluded, I intend to have a bath. The presence of uncouth soldiers has left a sense of grime about me that I simply _must_ purge."

She walked away, Ked watching her leave. After she cleared about ten paces from him, that sensation of her vanished again. He looked back to Long Feng and Jeong Jeong. They shared a glare, as Ozai clenched his fists in impotent fury at the center of the courtyard. After that long moment of silence between the two men who had sought so hard to control the princess, only to see it spin apart at the worst possible moment, Jeong Jeong nodded, and turned to his thugs. He nodded to the big one with the piercings, who in turn nodded to his underlings before vanishing from the crowd.

In Ked's very soul, he could feel a countdown to catastrophe. He just didn't know where it would land.

* * *

Chan rubbed his head, trying to ward off the headache he knew was coming. Every time he got really angry, which wasn't as often as a firebender usually did, his teeth started to grind. When they did that long enough, a blinding pain would work its way behind his eyes, and he'd be useless until it went away. The source of his anger? They'd left him behind. Again. Every time there was the slimmest chance for glory or advancement, he'd get undercut and marginalized. And it drove him up the godsdamned wall.

Of course, it wasn't just the fact that he'd gotten shoved to the sidelines yet again that had him seething. The barbarian was getting entirely too close to the Fire Lord, and that just wasn't right. He'd tried to confront the Tribesman about his behavior, and the damage he could do to her reputation if people assumed the wrong thing. But the Tribesman was nowhere to be found.

Betla was almost empty. Between the garrison relocating to Grand Ember and the much smaller task force returning from the mission to free Ozai from his wrongful imprisonment, there was only a token force in this place. It wasn't a small token, of course; there were still more than a hundred souls here. Chan knew that if this place were attacked right now, it'd fall in a heartbeat. Luckily, nobody knew to attack it. He kept walking the halls, hoping to find something to ease the headache, or calm him down, or something. There were a few unrecognized faces in the garrison. That struck Chan as odd; most of the people at Betla Chan had served with before. After all, most of them were there, just in that courtyard inside the outer wall, when Chan got his nuts kicked by Wang Fire.

One of them, a sallow man with narrow features, smirked as he rudely shoved past Chan. Chan considered giving him a piece of his mind, but it wasn't worth it. Some asshole wasn't worth his time. It wasn't until about a minute later that he realized that was Vachir, that Yu Yan archer who had met them on Grand Ember. But that information didn't help him in the slightest, so he just disregarded it. Instead, he finally twigged that if he couldn't berate the Tribesman, he could at least make sure Fire Lord Azula was aware of the risk she was taking. He'd seen her little speech. That had to have pissed somebody off.

Chan spotted the door to the chambers she had cloistered herself in until now. He knocked on the door. No answer. Still, he wasn't in a mood to just wait in the hallway, so he slid the door open, closing the door behind him. He could hear Azula ahead, talking to herself. It wasn't something she admitted to, but he'd heard her do it before in the past. Usually, it was a lot angrier than this, though. "Azula? I think you and I need to have a word," Chan called into the room. Azula became silent for a long moment.

"By all means," Azula said. Chan opened the next door, which moved from the foyer into the actual bedroom. Azula was sitting at her vanity, her back to the mirror. "So what is this about?"

"The Tribesman," Chan said. "I thought you were going to show him the door the instant we hit Betla. Instead," Chan shrugged with exasperation. "I know you have a plan for him. I'd expect nothing less. But would it kill you to let me in on this? Much as I hate to admit, I kinda like the guy. And when you're going to string him up, I'd like to be prepared for it."

Azula stared at him for a second, then an uneasy smile came to her face. "You're just going to have to trust that I'm doing the right thing," she said.

"Yeah, the right thing for who?" Chan said. He leaned against the door. After a moment, something started to twig at him.

"Well, if you can't trust your own Fire Lord, who can you trust?" Azula said, turning away.

"That's a good point," Chan said carefully. "You trust me, though, don't you?"

"Of course I do," Azula said, applying lipstick to her face. Chan's eyes narrowed, scrutinizing her. This definitely wasn't right.

"Funny. You've never said that before."

"Maybe because I thought it was implicit," Azula said. "Gods know I wouldn't put my trust in the barbarian."

Chan moved closer, his suspicions burning. "So what was up with that little speech of yours, anyway? Weren't you trying to keep your condition close to the chest?"

"It... seemed the opportune moment?" it was phrased as a statement, but from her mouth, it sounded the uneasy question. Chan stared hard at her, she looked back. Sweat began to roll down her forehead. Nervousness?

He took her hand, and rolled down her sleeve. Her arms were pristine and smooth, and their pallor was different from that of her face. He stared her in the eye, and her face betrayed naked terror. "Azula isn't religious. Azula doesn't trust anybody. And Azula has scars on her arms. You aren't Azula," Chan said, his voice a blade.

There was a light hiss, and Chan took a step back as the impersonator fouled herself, before tucking her arms around her and staring up at him, desperation clear on those golden eyes. "Please, I beg you, don't tell him. Don't tell anybody," she said, so meek that all similarity to the Fire Lord vanished completely. Chan stared at her for a moment. His mind might not be the best, but it started to put the pieces together just like anybody else would have in that situation.

"Agni's Blood," Chan said, the terrible realization dawning on him. He leaned down. "Clean yourself up and stay here. I'll deal with you later."

And Chan was running.

* * *

Azula lounged luxuriously in that tub of water, so hot it was almost scalding. Even though she still couldn't ever feel completely clean, it was relaxing, and that was a vast improvement over what she usually had to deal with. Today was a day of triumph. She had control of the Tribesman, by the loins if not by the mind, she had shown her 'captors' what sort of puppet she was, and she even derived a much greater sense of satisfaction from banishing her _father_ than she had thought possible. There was something there that she hadn't anticipated. As she was pronouncing the sentence, she had gotten legitimately angry, and she wasn't sure why.

The slow smile spread across Azula's face, which rested low in the water which almost covered her completely. She could hear little but the occasional thumps through the ground under the tub. Feel little but that suffusive heat. See little but the rough ceiling overhead. This was as close to contentment as she could remember being for years. Still, she had a long way to go before she returned to her full glory. She had only taken the first step. Next, she would have to start eroding Jeong Jeong's authority, and turn him against Long Feng. But she had plenty of time.

She lazily raised one arm out of the water, running her gaze down the patchwork of scars. They bothered her. In a way she couldn't really see. There was a black window in the way, muffled sounds from a dark room. She didn't _want_ to think about it, so much so that Azula knew there was something there to be seen. But that, as many other things, could wait. Her eyes slid closed, and her arm slipped back into the hot water. She let out a little sigh. Then her eyes slid back open.

And Vachir, the grey-skinned archer was staring down at her, his eyes betraying dark thoughts. There was just an instant, locked into stillness as Azula's mind quickly heaved itself back into proper order, where she didn't understand, where she was enraged that a man would come upon her nudity. But then that flash second passed, and his intentions were clear. She thrust her arm up, and a bolt of sickly blue fire launched toward his face. It didn't fly right, and was stalled in its generation; the abundant water vapor around her was sinking the heat and ruining her aim. Vachir, despite his proximity, easily dodged aside.

Azula exploded out of the tub, landing on bare feet and twisting into an arc kick, sending a twisting wash of fire toward the archer. But as before, the steam in the air interfered with her control, and he was able to duck under it, hook his arm under her leg, and bull rush her into a wall. She ignited a lancet of fire from her fingers and jabbed it toward the archer's skull... but a large, beefy hand interrupted her, twisting it up above her head. She turned to see Mongke, the leader of the defunct Rough Rhinos, smirking maliciously at her. For about one extra second, only. Because immediately after that, the other beefy fist smashed her in the jaw.

Stars flitted in her vision, and the archer began to knee her in her stomach, driving the air out of her lungs. She let out a roar, and bent the chi inside herself in a form that she had no recollection of learning. Fire erupted from every pore of her skin, searing and driving the two away for a moment. She was not going to lose to these thugs. She lashed out with one fist toward Mongke, an unsteady blast of fire he managed to divert with a classic Agni Kai block. The other was snuffed when Vachir swept a bucket through her bathwater and snuffed the flame as it was generated, exploding into even more disruptive steam. She put her back into the next attack, drawing the Chi out of her body in dangerous amounts, wielding it like a polearm with both hands. It slashed toward the two men...

And then Azula watched her hands hit the floorboards.

There was shock, obviously. She looked down at her hands. Then up at her arms. The arms ended too early. Too redly. She looked to her side, to the third of the group. It was a squat, hairy man, with green eyes, holding a jet black sword. Calmly, he put the blade away, before even the pain had a chance to start radiating up from Azula's amputated extremities. "...Wait..." Azula said.

From the corner of her eye, she could see her disheveled doppelganger. She was shaking her head, an expression of scorn on her face.

"Wait..." Azula said, her thoughts becoming fuzzy.

"I've been wanting this for a long time, bitch," Vachir said, grabbing her by the hair and slamming her against the wall. "I don't like the way you've been _looking _at me. Like you're better than me. Above me. I think I'm going to correct that."

The sickening grin of Vachir was the last thing she saw, before his knife removed her ability to see completely. The pain became bodily, then, she simply stopped keeping track of where it was. Searing heat to her forearms and wrists. Repeated blows to her face and chest. At least one slash across the hamstrings of her legs when she tried kicking at random. The beating only slowed when Mongke's laugh sounded in Azula's new blindness.

"That'll do for now. Wrap her up and bring her along," he said. "I'm sure they want her to last a good long while."

Azula felt hollow. She was alone. She was a failure. Everybody hated Azula. Everybody hated the monster. And now, the monster had finally gotten what it deserved. Abandoning all pretense to humanity or pride, blood tears running from hollow eyes, Azula, now no better than a little girl, screamed in absolute terror.

To Be Continued

* * *

_You must really hate me right now. Leave a review._


	8. He Rises With The Moon :Part 2:

**We should probably not bother with the whole blathering on thing. All questions will be answered at the end.**

* * *

Ked jumped to his feet, knife clutched behind his back as Chan exploded through the door with such force as to sent the thing off of its rail in flinders on the floor. Chan moved past Ked, throwing open the tall wardrobe, then sticking his head in the private lavatory and then out the window. He was paler than usual, and it looked like he had just run the length of the garrison.

"Did you misplace something?" Ked asked acerbically.

"Azula... wrong color... No scars..." Chan didn't seem able to gather himself. Ked blinked at him, still clutching his blade.

"I guess they didn't teach you to conjugate in Huojian. Don't feel bad, it can be tricky," Ked smirked. Chan let out a long breath, staring harshly at the Tribesman. "Alright, now that you've got your focus back, what the hell are you talking about?"

"Azula," Chan began. "There was a fake one. A fake Azula. She sounded exactly like her, almost had me fooled, but if they managed to find somebody they could pass off as the Fire Lord..."

Ked's blood ran cold.

"Then they won't need the real Azula at all," Ked said quietly, the knife slipping from his hand and clattering to the floor. It was a testament to the gravity of the situation that neither man made any mention of it. "And with that stunt she pulled..."

"They'll be getting rid of her," Chan said. "Where is she? I couldn't find her."

"She went to have a bath, didn't you hear?"

"I was on the far side of the yard," Chan said. But Ked was already moving, leaving Chan to trail behind as he quickly moved through the sparse crowds to where the bath-house was situated near the outer limits of the large complex, overlooking the raised buildings used to house the soldier's families. Ked kicked the door open, and the wet, cold air rushed out. Vacant. But he could smell blood. It was one of the things Tribesmen were trained to pick out in a heartbeat.

He followed his nose, to a broad stain which was seeping into the grate near the edge of the room. His eyes widened, and then he turned to Chan. "That's a lot of blood."

"I'm well aware," Chan said. He turned. "The dungeons. That's where they would bring her, after knocking her out."

"Then we better move," Ked said. The two descended into the bowels of the building, and Ked pointed Chan toward one dungeon while he himself took the other. Once again, there was a degree of silence usually not seen in such a venue; only one cell would be occupied, being the most secure one. He threw open the door. In the cage at the far end of the room, Smellerbee looked up, before shaking her head with a grunt and began scraping two shackles against each other again.

"Did they bring her here?" Ked asked.

"Does it look like anybody's given me company?" Smellerbee asked. Ked paced swiftly, drawing his hand across his face. "Let me guess, the Princess gave you the slip."

"Not voluntarily," Ked said. A notion occurred to him. He stopped, pointing at the woman who was obviously trying to manufacture a sliver with which she'd open the cage. "I have an offer for you. I open this door, and you help me save her."

"Save who from what?" Smellerbee asked, leaning back. Ked stared at her harshly. She actually paled a bit and stopped. "Alright, I know who. So what happened?"

"Will you do it or not?" Ked pressured.

"I'll need weapons," Bi said, getting to her feet. "My hookswords would be best, but I can make do with pretty much anything."

"Not a problem," Ked said, grabbing the keys from inside their protective case and throwing open the door. Smellerbee smirked at him, and rolled her shoulders. "Come on. They could have done anything to her by now."

"Yeaaaah, here's the thing," Smellerbee said slowly. Ked narrowed his eyes, but widened them again as she grabbed his shirt and used the leverage to drive a knee into his stomach. She then proceeded to yank the tails of his shirt up and over his head, blinding him, before kicking him in the shoulder, rather than the chest where she'd probably aimed, and tripped him to land face-first inside the dank cell. Ked shook the stars out of his vision and untangled himself from his shirt. As he did, there was a loud, metal bang, then a clunk. Smellerbee was standing on the far side of the cage. The outside.

"I didn't exactly agree to help you," Smellerbee said.

* * *

**Chapter 8: He Rises With The Moon (Part 2)**

* * *

Bi let out a low, dry laugh as she rummaged through the lockers outside the cell. There would only be basic, soldier's weapons in there, but also some discarded light armor as well. She quickly strapped that on. "I've gotta tell you, I didn't actually believe you'd be that gullible. If that Princess was here, I'd have never gotten away with that, but you? It was like taking candy from a–"

Bi was cut off as she lost the ability to breathe of her own volition. Jerkily, and no doubt painfully, her entire body twisted and turned, until she was facing Ked. And Ked was in a state of wrath the likes of which he had seldom experienced. The waterbender held the blood in her veins hostage, only releasing control of her diaphragm back to her once he had proven his point. But he made sure her jaw was clamped shut nice and tight.

"I don't appreciate that," Ked said caustically. "You could have cost a woman her life, with that little stunt. If I were more vindictive, I would tear every droplet of water out of your body. Slowly. So that you dissolved to dust from your feet up to your neck, and you'd do it alive, because I'm just that godsdamned good. Be _thankful _I'm not that vindictive," Ked said. He got to his feet, his crooked hands marching the otherwise helpless Smellerbee to the door which she had locked. She let out muffled cries of pain and alarm as her arm reached down and thrust the keys back into the lock, opening it wide.

Ked stared at her dark eyes for a long moment, then cast his hands away, her own body hurling her into the back wall, the keys falling to the floor. Ked stepped out of the cell, and glared down at her. "Now that you've got that little piece of rebellion out of your system, I'm going to offer you one more chance. You can either help me protect the woman I love, or you can rot in that prison for the next, and last, two days of your life. What do you choose?"

"Well, since you put it that way..." Bi said with a groan. She got to her feet, striking a bit of dust off of herself. Ked, still not in a good mood, smashed the contents of the water bucket over her, scraping off a goodly amount of the filth which had covered her. Bi just stood there, staring back at him, dripping wet. "You know, you can be a real ass."

"I'm having a bad day," Ked said. He turned and left, and she, having no other direction she could travel, followed behind. He was aware that if she so desired, she could try to bury a sword into his back. At the moment, he almost hoped she would try.

The door opposite the one he'd entered for his cell block was closed, Chan stopping himself from saying something when he noticed the former royal behind him. "I assume you have a plan?"

"No," Ked said. "Not even a little bit. Come on. Azula's probably badly hurt."

Chan grit his teeth. Ked turned back and moved closer. "There's..."

"What is it, Chan?" Ked demanded, staring the man in the face.

"Ked... if they see me helping you, they'll know where I learned about the real Azula. I'm not going to get some innocent woman hurt," Chan said, uncomfortably. He shook his head. "I've got a lot of experience being an ass. I figure it's time to do something right for a change."

"You are staying?" Ked asked. Chan took a deep breath, then nodded slowly. Ked sighed. "Then they're going to have to believe you tried to stop me."

"I get it," Chan said, closing his eyes and tightening his jaw. "Just try not to ruin the money-maker."

Ked nodded, then grabbed a loose brick and smashed it into the side of Chan's head. He fell with a sick thud, which actually alarmed the waterbender a bit, and caused a confused 'what the hell?' from Smellerbee. Ked quickly laid a glowing hand to Chan's head, and his eyes widened at finding he'd done a lot more damage than he'd expected to. He let a bit of his energy flow into the firebender, repairing the skull fracture he'd caused, but not so much as to bring him back to lucidity.

"Let's go," Ked said, with Chan breathing steadily on the ground. Smellerbee stared at him like he was about to eat her. And to be frank, he didn't really give a damn.

* * *

"And you are sure that she was seen?" Ursa said, tearing through her wardrobes with a measure of haste usually not associated with the Empress of one of the larger cultures remaining on this Earth. Jee looked about uncomfortably, since she had been in a taking ever since the news had reached Kad Deid.

"I can only say what my acquaintances said. The means that they transmitted the information was swift, but left much room for error," Jee said. "It could be Azula. Could be."

"Then what was she doing in Betla?"

"I cannot say, Empress," Jee answered carefully. As familiar as the two were – and the term 'intimately' could be used to full effect – there was one thing at which Jee knew he would either tread lightly or suffer the consequences; her children were it. "There are two schools of thought. We haven't had proper word back from either Baihu or the possible agent on the inside, so..."

"Agent on the inside?" Ursa asked coldly, her golden eyes flashing.

"Possible," Jee reminded. "As it is, we are operating on third hand information at best. Please, you mustn't get your hopes up in case..."

"You have no place telling me what I may and may not feel. You never had children. You don't understand," Ursa said, then tore through her clothing again. Well, this wasn't actually her clothing. If his memory served, these were the clothes of Emperor Nathanael's wife, back during the Weary War when relations between the Fire Nation and Great Whales weren't quite as violent as they eventually became. They were ill fitting, slightly moth-eaten and dusty. She didn't even strike the dust off before throwing them onto the bed. "Now you will either aid me or you will get out of my way, but I promise you, you will not stand against me," Ursa warned.

"I never intended to," Jee said with a sigh. He knew from the moment that the news crossed his desk that this would be coming. He reached behind the door and pulled out a thick bundle, throwing it onto the floor. "Clothing of the lower classes, disguises, paperwork, and a small amount of Fire Nation cash."

Ursa turned, halting in her preparation of her own traveling kit when his hit the ground. She turned up to him, and a small smile pulled at her face. Grey hairs or no, she was a striking woman. "It is times like these that remind me why I keep you around," Ursa said, leaving the wardrobes be.

"That and the sex," Jee offered. Ursa smirked, picking up and foisting off the bag on Jee.

"Of course."

* * *

"You do know this is crazy, right?" Bi said once again as he kept moving through the most secure areas of the garrison. "And this helmet stinks! This guy should either brush his teeth or have them pulled!"

"I'm well aware and you forfeited my sympathy when you tried to lock me up with the full moon out," Ked said. The people he walked past gave him less than no attention, and nobody stood in his way save for those leading to the actual war-room, but the chances of her being taken there were so astronomically slim as to beggar the imagination.

"So how are we supposed to find her, anyway?" she asked.

Ked was about to answer when he felt her. Close, and moving closer. His eyes swung about, trying to catch sight of her, but the only person in the hall besides the two of them was the sallow Yu Yan archer, Vachir. He was holding a bag, smiling in that ophidian way he did. As he walked past, it was as though Azula had. Ked spun, pointing at him. "Stop."

"Why?" Vachir asked over his shoulder. Ked wasn't having it. Katara had once mentioned, in passing, years ago, that there were certain skills learned once in the South Water Tribe which had been better forgotten, evil skills and heinous abilities relegated gratefully to the dusts of time. She was speaking of the trade called bloodbending, to use the liquid in somebody's body against them. She was so _ignorant_ of the truly heinous capabilities that waterbending could discover. So when Ked demanded the water in Vachir's body halt, he was utilizing the least of possible evils.

"What's happening to me!" Vachir asked, his shoulders flexing as he tried to pull himself away from the irresistible force which had contained him. Ked gestured down, and he fell to his knees, his chin down on his chest. Ked could feel Azula, right here. Like she was right in front of him. Ked grabbed the bag and thrust his hand inside.

And he went a little bit numb.

"What is it?" Bi asked. "What's in the bag?" Ked dropped the bag, but part of its contents was still in his hand. She picked it up, looked inside, and turned a little bit green. "Oh... Oh my gods..."

Ked stared down at the bloody eye in his hand. Golden. It had his energy running through it. It could have come from only one person in this entire planet. Ked had often heard that when people lost themselves into rage, they would see red, a pall of blood coloring their vision and coopting their sensorum. Uncle Bato, when he lost almost everything during that Fire Nation raid which resulted in Ked's sister, spoke of the world drifting away, and blood taking its place. Ked did not see red. It was not blood-drunkedness. Even as the tears were leaking from Ked's eyes, he knew that it was not that. Because Ked did not see red.

Ked saw black. The end of all things.

His own sweat began to turn black, blacker than any blackness that existed in nature. It gathered down his arms, dissolving first the eye in his hand, then the whole of his sleeves, into base dust. Ked, now longer transfixed on that eye, cast a wrathful glare at Vachir. What could he say? What question could he ask that would make this...

The answer came when Ked almost unconsciously slammed his blacker-than-black hand onto the side of Vachir's face. The man let out a scream so unlike anything that Ked had ever heard. It wasn't loud. It was quiet, desperate. The light, such as it was, drained out of Vachir's eyes and Ked felt something moving into him. He wasn't just killing Vachir with this twisted perversion of healing; he was stealing the man's soul. Or what passed for one. When the last scrap of it had been torn bloodily from its vessel, Ked dropped to his knees. He could feel it, pressing out on his veins. All of his skin had that snaking blackness running through it, but at the same time, glowed faintly pink, the energy pressing out against his skin, threatening to burst him from within.

"_Great Goddess, Old Sedna give me the clarity to hold my path_," Ked prayed desperately, trying to keep his mind under that onslaught. With every word he spoke, the echo of Vachir's last scream escaped his mouth. "_Yue, grant me the resilience to save the woman who I love. And may Tenger Etseg guide my fury to those who deserve it, and guide me back from the path of madness. For if not, I shall not live to see another moonrise_."

"What... the hell... was that?" Smellerbee asked. Ked rose to his feet, his venous and glowing hands still clasped tightly. He could feel that soul still there. It was energy. To do with as he would. He could release it into the Sea of Souls... or he could burn it down to the fundaments and use its heat to give him strength. Considering his state of mind and the soul in question, it was barely even a consideration.

"_And if I be lost, then may Yer Tonri forgive me for what I am about to do_," Ked said, a desperate scream echoing behind his words.

"You're starting to freak me out," Smellerbee said.

"Good. Bring the bag," Ked said with that horrible harmony beneath it. "I know where she is."

* * *

The bag made her very uncomfortable. It wasn't heavy, not by any stretch of the imagination. No, it was the contents that filled her with unease. The bag was tied to her back, now, freeing up her hands. As she had all those times before, there was a sword in each of her hands, and a long knife clutched between her teeth. It was a style she developed years ago, when she was young and immortal, when Jet was still alive. When she stopped being a child at the age of eight. Ever since then, she had been fighting. And she would fight until the day she died. More than likely, that would be the reason for it.

Ked also made her uncomfortable. When she had been talking to him earlier, he seemed a pleasant enough Tribesman, if a bit of a dunce in certain areas. And his professed shortcomings made her wonder just how they were supposed to win. But she had also heard that Tribesmen sometimes went on hopeless suicide attacks, hoping nothing more than to cause as much damage as humanly possible, then a little bit more, then die. She really hoped she wasn't playing backup to somebody like that. Especially since the place Ked was stomping toward was one of the most well guarded in the entire fort.

One of the guards at the doorway lowered his spear across it, symbolically barring Ked's way. "Back away, barbarian. You have no reason to be here," he said with distinct boredom. Ked didn't stop. His eyes widened. "I said stop! You aren't authorized to be here!"

His fellow shot him a look, then leveled his spear toward Ked. "Stop now or I'll be forced to kill you!" he shouted. Ked didn't listen. Bi had still gone unnoticed, which ordinarily would have been odd because she was armed with two swords and a knife, but when faced with a choice between that and paying attention to the gruesomely glowing Tribesman, the choice was obvious. With a grunt of angry effort, he lunged forward, piercing Ked through the shoulder, the blade coming out the back. Ked's pained shout held two voices. Ked looked at the spear through him impassively. From the hallway in either direction, Smellerbee could see soldiers running toward them, drawn by the commotion. Ked didn't, though. He grabbed the haft with one hand and slammed a fist beyond it, snapping the thing off, before tearing it out of his wound. The hole closed up with visible speed. The two guards shared a look, before the other tried stabbing Ked as well.

This time, Ked batted the spear-tip aside, and made a clawing motion with each hand. The two guards let out the shortest of screams, before they... desiccated. The water of their bodies, left their bodies, and they tipped over to the floor, instantly mummified. Without a second glance, Ked took that water and hurled it down either hallway, filling them with a brutal wave of sharp, high-velocity ice. The soldiers trying to flank the two found themselves ventilated under the onslaught.

"I thought you said you were weak?" Bi muttered around the knife in her teeth.

"Not tonight," Ked answered. He thrust forward, and the water from his flask smashed the door open, with such power that the top hinge broke. A wash of flame swept toward him, through that destroyed portal, but Ked pulled his arms toward him, a brutal rictus on his face, and Smellerbee could feel the sweat pulled off of her skin. It wasn't the only water moving, because in a heartbeat, a block of cloudy, grey ice had appeared in the door, stopping the flames dead. With a scream which was so far beyond the line between human and bestial that it had vanished across the horizon, Ked slammed a fist forward, and that ice exploded into stinking steam. She could hear screams from within as the soldiers were scalded, but Ked was already moving.

"What the hell was that?" Smellerbee asked, but the answer was preempted when she had to duck under a spear-tip which whistled toward her back. Her first sword thrust was into the poorly protected groin, which made the man understandably enough drop his weapon and scream in pain. The second was her merciful cut, gashing out the side of his neck without a thought nor a whisper of pity. Blue armor, red armor, it didn't much matter to her. As long as there was somebody needing killing.

Ked didn't answer her. As he strode implacable and indefatigable through the halls leading past the war rooms, the most guarded in the entire fort, he didn't even halt when a pair of firebenders tried to cook him in a cross fire. He simply held his hands out, and his flesh rippled, water streaming out of his body into a pair of spikes. He cast them out, and they shot right through the incoming flame landing with wet thunks inside the chests of the firebenders. The flames washed over him, driving him down to a knee, his shirt burning off of his body, his skin boiling... but then reconstituting, that sickly light flaring brighter, that dark venation throbbing. Blood still dripped from the pores on his hand, though.

As Ked gasped for breath, obviously losing his momentum for having to deal with that pincer attack, Smellerbee moved into action. Now, the alarm was fully raised, and blue-armored soldiers were pouring in from every direction. Bi began to bound, body low, slashing at legs and hands with her paired swords. If she had Jet's hookswords, it would be so much easier, but as it was, she was causing heinous injury with every thrust and slash. She managed to bring one down with a lucky jab, but the luck ran both ways because when he fell, he took the sword with him.

She quickly spat the knife into her disarmed hand, and using the both together only barely managed to stop a polearm from splitting her like a cord of wood, instead having it peel the skin off her shoulder. She let out her own cry of pain, then twisted the dagger and hurled it into the face of the offending soldier. She couldn't keep up this pace for long, especially considering how well she was disarming herself.

"I could use a bit of help here, Tribesman!" Bi shouted, trying to keep all three directions from simply swarming and overwhelming them. With one sword, shredded armor, and a downed Tribesman, she didn't like her chances.

"Surrender and you will be taken prisoner," one of the soldiers shouted.

"I'd rather die than spend one more moment in that cell," Bi answered, still trying to keep two hundred and seventy degrees of surroundedness covered with only one blade.

"Then we shall oblige you."

"Not today," Ked answered, finally having caught his breath. With a roar, he clawed toward one of the soldiers, somehow dragging that man toward him with only a gesture. He'd gathered such momentum by the time he reached the two of them that when Ked tore, the desiccated remains shot past, almost tripping Bi and sending the soldiers scattering lest they be smashed by it. He twisted, and hurled that man-sized blob of water at the side he had faced before, instantly freezing it into murky ice and smashing down the soldiers, and the wall beyond them, in a single motion. One soldier tried firing an arrow at the two of them, but Bi was quick, and managed to deflect it away on the blade. It was a skill which she and Shot had worked long to perfect, and one she was thankful for.

Ked turned to the last hall which hadn't been depopulated or bowled down, and raked his hands toward himself. At first Bi couldn't see what he was doing, but a wave of water smashed into their backs. He had just stolen all of the water of the corpses, which he used to snap freeze and bury the way back in ice. Obviously he wasn't thinking straight, but how could he be expected to right now? He was a goddamned berserker. Ked stared at the last hall, its inhabitants still rising to their feet. "Live or die. Make your choice," Ked said quietly, that scream playing a horrifying sort of harmony to his ultimatum. The soldiers looked amongst themselves, to those who had fallen already, and made the wisest decision they had ever made in their lives, sprinting away from the bloody swordswoman and the visibly and tangibly wrong waterbender.

"So how are we supposed to find this bitch?" Bi asked.

"I can feel her," Ked said, and he started walking again. Even though he claimed to know where he was going, it didn't look like it, because he kept on finding dead ends. And when he found a dead end, he didn't bother going around, he simply tore the water out of his flask and smashed it into the wall until the wall collapsed. At this point, any soldiers brave enough to not flee outright were kiting the two of them at what they assumed was a safe distance. Smellerbee couldn't say it was, one way or another, but knew that she herself was well within it.

Not for the first time, she pondered whether she had made the right choices in her life.

* * *

There was blackness. Blackness and pain. She couldn't feel her hands, but that wasn't surprising. She didn't have them anymore. She didn't know why they didn't just kill her in the bath room. And at the moment, her mind was in no condition to try to guess why that was. She hacked and sobbed, trying to stop herself, trying to control her outbursts, but as able of that as to burn the sky or... or be good enough for somebody to care about her. So weak. So pathetic. Struck down like the monster she was. There was a sort of properness about that, the deeply cynical part of her mind pointed out. But as with many other things, she was in no condition to think about it.

"Well... Look what the cat dragged in," a voice came to her in that blackness. She tried once again to stop her weeping. And as before, to no effect. She couldn't even stare defiantly at the voice, lacking eyes as she was. "I have to say, if I'd have known it would turn out like this, I would have done Jeong Jeong first. Just to see what that angry little mind of yours would come up with to spite him. Spite. What a lovely concept."

"Just kill me," Azula flubbed. Between her sobbing and the tongue she had almost bitten through during the beating, she was barely legible. There came a laugh, first starting low, but then growing.

"Kill you? Why would I do that?" the voice asked. It was a man, and it came closer. "Why, when you've given me so much delicious fear over the years? Why, you're practically a one woman buffet. Hell with the War, you could sustain me all by your lonesome."

"Kill me or leave me alone!" Azula shouted, blood spraying out onto her lips as she did so.

"Oh, trust me, I've got plans for you. J.J. thinks he gets to kill you, but then again, he always was a hate-filled old codger, wasn't he?" that laugh again. "Oh, he wanted so badly to destroy you. He waited forty years for the opportunity. It's a good thing I didn't try that with some of the other people you pissed off. You would have found yourself stabbed in the head while you were still percolating in Ursa's belly. J.J. was a patient one, though. He didn't want you dead. He wanted you _destroyed_. And that, unlike the former, I can abide."

"What do you want?" Azula said, still wracking and sobbing and coughing.

"Not much. Everything. What you're easily capable of giving me. Everything that you are," he answered. If she weren't as she was right now, she would have been quite angered by that sort of answer. But she was. "I want your fear, princess. And you're going to give it to me. Forever."

"I'm gonna die soon," Azula slurred. "And you'll have nothing."

"Please, like I care if you're alive or not to give me fear," the man said. "In ages past, your ancestors, the first benders of the energy of the universe itself, bowed down to me and worshiped me as a god. The distances between life and death mean nothing to me. It's almost a shame you don't recognize me. We worked so well together in the past. Azula and Irukandji, tearing apart history itself. Good times. The firebending prodigy and a god of wealth and taste. It's almost like a sit-com, but with better writing and a decent time-slot."

"Leave me alone," Azula said miserably, her sobs finally dying to a soul-crushing ennui which settled into her. This was the ultimate proof that she didn't deserve to live. That she hadn't even earned the right to die.

"Now why would I do..." Irukandji trailed off, as though distracted. "Oh, I see. So you've got your other half coming, do you? Think that's all it'll take to bring me down? Well sorry to tell you, little girl. I am technically five times older than the universe itself. And I... will not... die!"

Azula just hung there like slaughtered meat, hanging from a metaphorical hook. Her empty eyes stared at the floor, not caring what came, because it wouldn't matter in the slightest. They were right. They were all right. Cast down and destroyed as she deserved. She could hear a tsk in the room.

"Oh, don't start crying again. It's undignified," Irukandji sneered. "Besides, I know for a fact that this isn't the last time I'll get to sup of your sweet terror. See you soon, princess. Around and 'round and 'round we go... and when we stop? Everyone dies."

And Azula was alone again. Alone but for her broken mind, her brutalized body, and the people who hated her.

* * *

Ked could feel that sick energy flowing through him as he smashed down the last wall between him and his goal. He could feel _him_ flowing through his veins, screaming in broken-minded terror. Much as Ked could not claim to hold any jurisdiction over the fates of souls, Vachir had earned his demise in cruelty. As Ked pulled the man's soul out of his body, he could see everything that Vachir had ever done, the thousand bleeding cuts seeping what good he was once potentially capable of onto the slaughter room floor, leaving that debauched form behind. But now, it was in Ked's hands, and the soul was energy. Energy that Ked could use. And he used it. He burned through Vachir's soul like a twig faggot, its power vaulting Ked from mediocrity to standing on the level of Master Katara herself, if during the day.

It was, without any doubt, the most unabashedly evil use of waterbending that Ked had ever discovered.

And Ked didn't care.

"Can we get moving? Those assholes are going to be closing in on us..." Bi said. Ked shot her a look.

"Get to the town, as fast as you can," Ked said, that scream still underlying his voice. Let Vachir scream. He earned it. "Find a ship, any ship that'll survive a journey. Get food and get it ready to sail."

"We're bugging out?" she asked. Ked nodded. Bi smirked, her thin lips pulling wide. "That's probably the smartest thing I've heard out of you all goddamned day."

By the time the dust cleared, and the black-fogged vision which he viewed the world at the moment did likewise, Smellerbee was already gone, running back through the fort. He could feel his energy in Azula's body, but it was guttering. There was almost more of his soul in her body than was her own. Ked rushed to her. He slashed at the chains suspending her from the ceiling, letting her slump to the floor. Her face was vacant, as though empty of any thought or intention.

"No. No, not again," Ked shouted, that scream drifted out of his voice. Ked's body glowed, brighter than ever as if all of the light in the room snapped to him, and the glow migrated down to his hands as he flooded his own, pure and unblemished energy into her. It barely even registered to Ked that his hands were between her naked breasts, as her back arced up, and she pulled in a brutal, painful gasp of wind. Her pallor became much more flush, the blood she'd lost replaced in an instant of turbo-charged production. Her arm-stumps were still raw, her eyes still empty. But he didn't have time to fix that. Not yet. "Azula, can you hear me?"

There was a sob which came from her throat.

"I'm here, Azula. I'm not going to leave you behind," Ked said to her. Her face, scarred and bloody as it was, twisted, and she threw herself at Ked. If she really wanted to kill him, he probably would have let her, but instead, she wrapped what was left of her arms around him, sobbing heavily and desperately into his chest. He turned, having her grab ahold of his back, and lifted her off the ground. He doubted she would be able to walk, and even if she could, she was still blind.

Ked got to his feet. Despite her obvious problems, Azula was clinging to him as a lifeline. "Just hold on to me, and I'll keep you safe," Ked said. It was the mantra of his life. She weighed more than he would have estimated, but considering she eschewed fat for lean muscle, it wasn't so surprising. Still, he now had to make his way back through the bumbleskunk's nest, only this time, he'd already kicked it.

He could feel Vachir's energy growing weaker. As much power as it was giving him, it burned fast. He would either have to do this right the first time, or he would die. But he would die protecting somebody he cared about. Just as he always suspected he would. In a way, the grim thought gave him strength. Strength he directed to his legs, and made them pump, sending the overclocked waterbender and the crippled, naked royal along the halls which they had practically crawled through earlier.

Ked saw something approaching out of the corner of his eye, and barely ducked fast enough to get out of the way of a block which flew out of one wall and smashed against another. A man in dark green robes was standing in the hallway, wearing stone shoes and gloves. Dai Li. He launched a fist at the two of them, and Ked only managed to deflect it by controlling the man's limb, disrupting his Kata and making it fly wide. He then pulled at the bath rooms, two floors lower, and heaved upward. The stone around his feet trembled, before a get of water, naturally steaming hot from the springs running under the island, smashed through the floor and rained through the room. The Dai Li vanished in the deluge.

Ked ran forward, then began freezing the ice as he reached it, skating along its surface and past the the other Dai Li who were now congregating out of every godsdamned direction to stop him. He could hear their stone hands slamming into the ice behind him; he could see the blocks they hurled as he weaved around them, as they vanished into that water and were skated over. As the water ran out, he bounded off of its edge, then heaved, flashing it into steam, then snapping it back into ice, clogging the path back. There were other Dai Li. He could feel the water in their bodies as they tore toward him. And he was running out of time.

He erupted into the yard, drawing the confused and alarmed stares of the civilians of the base. Some of them shouted after him, the guards on the walls making particularly violent threats. Ked didn't care. He came to a stumbling stop at the iron portcullis which had dropped into place, barring his way. He let out an enraged scream, and tried slashing at that iron with his flask of water, but they only dented the thing. Vachir's soul was dying. So was Ked's strength.

"Closed!" Ked shouted in anger. "It had to be closed didn't it!"

"Shtep back," Azula's voice was a hoarse whisper, urgent and ragged. Ked only made it two steps back when he heard her take in a lung of breath. Then, she leaned forward, her chin on his shoulder, and let out a cry of pain.

A snapping crack came into being, popping toward that gate, moving like a beam of solid death. It hit the iron, and detonated with a massive explosion. It threw Ked onto his side, and only his side because he had twisted in the air so not to land on Azula. He quickly pulled himself up. Her eyes were bleeding, and she looked a lot paler than she was a moment before. "Come on, Azula! We're almost there!"

Ked charged through that gate, and was almost immediately struck in the side by an arrow. He turned, and lashed out with that ball of water. A purist might call what he did a water whip, but water whips had the tendency to come back. This was just knocking an archer from the parapets. With rib crushing force. Ked turned and kept running. The arrow was tearing at him, but he could deal with that later. That, or he'd be dead, and it wouldn't matter very much.

He left the road almost immediately, and jumped onto the stream running down toward the town below. He rode it down, making better time than any pursuer save on an Eel Hound, and there were no such beasts on Betla. He shot through the town as a streak, at a speed which could only be bettered by an airbender, and came to the harbor. Smellerbee had actually kept her word, which surprised Ked a bit, and waved the two of them toward a small, covered ship of dark, Fire Nation iron. Ked skated up the waters and dropped onto its deck.

"I hope this'll do," Bi said. "We've got enough coal to last about two weeks, enough food for about that long. I couldn't get any water, but I figured..."

"Good," Ked said. "Take us out."

"And how exactly do I know how to pilot this thing?" she asked.

"JUST DO IT!" Ked roared. She actually backed away, hands placating, and went to the helm. He was being irrational. He could see that. But he didn't care.

Ked pulled the bag Bi had carried closer, extracting the hands from within it. They were grey and lifeless, probably starting to rot. Ked forced the last of Vachir's energy into them, and they burst back into a life-like pallor. With haste born of personal desperation, he pressed the limbs into their place, and with his own waning stocks, he ignited that healing energy, connecting lost limb to remaining stump. She let out a grunt of pain. The power kept flowing, and he could feel it pulling her hamstrings back into their proper form.

"They feel... tingly..." Azula whispered. Ked quickly pulled a strip of tarp over her, giving her at least some shelter for her nudity.

"And so will this," Ked said. He took a moment, trying to decide if he was capable of it or not. But she needed this. So he leaned down over her face, and gave her what was in one way a kiss, and in another, surgery.

He could feel his energy leaving him, flowing through the connection he made with her body. He could feel the blood in her body, pulling her tongue back into full form, but then, that control moved up, to the vacant sockets. Nothing but pools of blood. But blood was water, with all of the makings of human flesh.

So Ked did something remarkable, something he had only guessed possible. He took that blood and he transfigured it, breaking it apart, infusing the light of his soul into it. And then he started building. The flesh knit, a bloody sclera pressing her eyelids out. A semi-opaque cornea bulging further before it cleared. The lens of that clearer stuff, the muscular iris, the scraps of the retina grown and expanded to proper form. And then...

Ked parted from that kiss, and Azula opened her eyes. They weren't quite the same color they had been before. The gold was bruised, her gaze bewildered. Then darkening. Then vacant, as those eyes slid shut again. Ked fell back, so exhausted he could barely breathe. He looked over as Bi finally shouted something that wasn't frustration, that she had found something that worked. Standing on the wharf, he could see another Tribesman. Sokka Baihu. He was looking down at the boat from the high wharf. His bright blue eyes, shining in the full moon light, turned slightly, over the barely covered form of Azula. He then turned to Ked more directly, as the smoke began to billow up into the night sky, and the ship started to move. Sokka nodded once, then turned and walked back down the wharf.

"We're moving!" Bi said, with a note of triumph. "So where are we heading?"

"South..." Ked whispered, his eyes heavy. "South."

* * *

The people milled around the two of them as they all, as one organism, converged on the once abandoned royal palace at Grand Ember. With the fall of Yuchiban House centuries ago, the palace which once played house to the first family of Ember lay vacant, save for those few times in the last few decades when one of the Fire Lords overtook it during a state function or vacation. There was a veritable wealth of history and information, some of it shocking, scandalous or salacious, which only the very few at the highest echelons of society were privy to. While she was a few steps down from the top during her time here, there was little which passed unnoticed under her golden gaze.

"It's been a very long time since I came to Grand Ember," Ursa said.

"Are you sure this is wise?" Jee asked. He had gone unshaven during their trip, and in his base, untidy clothing – which she shared, something bringing back memories of her own – they vanished into the crowds easily enough.

"Definitely not," Ursa admitted. "But there is nobody who can identify me amongst the commoners. I am sure of it."

"They might surprise you," Jee pointed out. She rolled her eyes.

"The last time I was here was more than a decade ago," she said, sing-song. "I didn't have _any_ grey hair, less wrinkles, and everybody around me was too busy bowing and revering me. As they should, of course."

"I'd forgotten how you get when you feel nostalgic," Jee said with a smirk.

"Try to be more attentive, then," she said, patting him lightly on the cheek. Her smirk dropped off. "The first time in so many years. Agni's blood, I feel like I'm going to pass out."

"You don't look it."

"Always with the compliment," Ursa answered. She glanced across the crowds. While in Ember, the closest that came to her eye color was a dull amber, she wasn't so remarkable. It wasn't the first time she disappeared. But it would probably be the last. She just needed to talk to Azula. Zuko was denied to her, by heinous curse on pain of death, but Azula? Ursa, despite everything else about her, always tried to be a good mother. Her own hadn't been fair shakes, more interested in status and standing than parenting. Ursa might have made many mistakes in her life, but neglecting her children was never one of them.

"Do you have any idea what you're going to say to her?" Jee asked. He sounded suspicious, but not without reason. He didn't know Azula the way Ursa did. She remembered that last talk they had, the promise the girl gave. The promise the girl _meant_.

Ursa shook her head. "I really don't know. I wish I did."

Jee stared ahead, and nodded. She followed his gaze, and saw the assembled masses ahead, gathered in the courtyard under the Yuchiban Palace. She raised a brow, and Jee shrugged. "I'm guessing they have something lined up," he offered. She frowned, looking up at the standard which waved behind the balcony. It was the tripoint flame of the Fire Nation, but it was black on incandescent blue, rather than scarlet. "Probably something to do with the rebellion."

The answer came before Ursa could make a sarcastic comment, as the crowd let out a broad cheer, and a woman strode onto the balcony above. Even from the great distance, Ursa could see that black hair, the bright-red lips. A distant, maternal smile came to Ursa's face, glowing like the sun. Azula.

The woman stood stock still, staring down. There was a well built man standing next to her, Embiar by his complexion and firebender by his unarmed nature. She glanced back at him, and he prompted her onward. The smile on Ursa's face curdled. Azula cleared her throat, and began to speak.

"My people of the true Fire Nation, we stand on the precipice of history," the girl began.

Jee rubbed at his unshaven face. "So how exactly are we supposed to get close to her. She's got layers and layers of security around her, preventing people like you from getting anywhere near her. I am assuming you have a brilliant plan."

"No, I don't. But I don't need one," Ursa said bitterly, angrily.

"Why not? We can't just waltz right up to her..."

"And we won't," she said, "because that isn't my daughter."

Jee stared at her. "Are you..." she glared at him. "Of course you're sure. How?"

"My daughter was never nervous. She never accepted prompting from anybody. And just listen to her? Is that the way Fire Lord Azula would speak?"

"...across the breadth of this nation. They are waiting for the courage of the people of Ember to cast off the shackles of oppression and rise up against the false Fire Lord in his fortress to the West," the impostor continued. Jee began to nod slowly.

"I see what you mean, but..."

"I am capable of recognizing my own daughter, Jee," Ursa said angrily. Jee nodded.

"So what do we do now? If we aren't going to speak to this one, since it's obviously unnecessary, _what do we do now_?" Jee asked.

"They're declaring war on my son, the one person on this Earth that I am strictly forbidden from helping," Ursa muttered. She turned a glare, albeit an undeserved one, to the man standing next to her, the sole confidante she'd managed to gather in the last decade. "Somewhere out there is my daughter. She is alive. I don't know how I'm going to find her but I swear that I will."

"I don't doubt that, madam. Not for an instant," Jee answered. "We should leave."

Ursa nodded. She turned her eyes up, following the buildings, stretching toward the sky like the temples of the Air Nomads of old, arrogant and proud as they walked straight into the ocean, crumbling into the tides. "It's been a long time... since I came to Grand Ember."

"I know," Jee said quietly, gently setting a hand across her shoulders and guiding her away. "It's been a long time since any of us got to go home."

* * *

Sokka sat on the rock, staring at the rising sun. Six years since he'd last been on this island. And with his ship in impound, since Ked did that insane stunt of tearing the brutalized Azula out of their 'care', he had only a small bag of tools and Hawky to keep him company. Of course, Hawky had been sent on his way days ago. Days were long enough. He didn't like being trapped, behind the ball, but what else could he do? So he sat on a rock, tinkering with various bits, trying to get the shutter to work right. There had to be a way to make this work right, and maybe having a glut of technology was only getting in his way.

He let out a sigh, slipping the tiny screwdriver back into its pouch, and read the message which Hawky had arrived with. Zhu Di, his sister-in-law and the actual matriarch of House Baihu, had 'officially' thrown in with the rebellion. At least, to her credit, she had done so in a way which didn't help the rebels in any way shape or form. Baihu had already fallen once this decade; it made sense not to make it twice.

Sokka looked up just as the white form began to descend, slipping below the clouds and growing larger with every passing moment. It let out a low bellow as it approached, before landing its fifteen tonne mass on six furry white legs. It stomped forward a few more steps before letting out another bellow, then licking out, knocking Sokka off his seat and covering him with drool. Sokka just lay there, staring up at Basu and his effervescent pilot.

"I don't even need to say how nice it is to see you," Sokka said with a grin. Ty Lee leapt off of Basu's head and tackled Sokka, driving him even harder into the ground with a shout of characteristic joy.

"I was so worried!" she said, smiling even as she creaked his ribs with her embrace. She then kissed him quite powerfully, before hugging him again. "Where is your boat? What happened to your hair? Is there a hammer jabbing into my ribs or are you just _really_ happy to see me? What are you doing back here on Betla? We've had some real problems with the rest of the family."

"What do you mean?" he said, trying to get his head above the tide of questions she barraged him with. It was her way.

"They tried to kill Zuko and the children," she informed him, finally allowing him to stand. He towered over her. "But we managed to keep everybody safe. And now Mai's got another baby. They called him Rukio. And I saw Azula. She... she protected Kimiko and Tahm-Tahm. She was like she used to be, Sokka. For just a second there, her aura wasn't blue."

"I see," Sokka said. He stared down at her for a moment. "You kept visiting her, didn't you?"

The smile dropped off of Ty Lee's face, and she nodded, biting her lip. "I thought maybe... if I talked about the old times, about the way things were when we were children, it might do something. Spark something. Bring something back. I wanted her to be alright. I wanted my best friend back."

Sokka sighed, and nodded. "Of course you did," he said. She had a remarkably big heart behind the remarkably big breasts. "Sweetheart, I think that it's time... that we went to find her."

"You mean?" Ty Lee asked.

Sokka nodded. "You and I are going to find Azula," he said. She embraced him again, rising up on her tip-toes to plant a lusty kiss on his mouth. But contrary to what should, in the best of circumstances, be running through his head – namely that his insanely attractive wife was in a giving mood – he kept on wondering one thing. How do I tell her that Azula hasn't changed? How do I tell her that _her_ Azula is gone?

* * *

_See? Wasn't that worth waiting for? Oh, wait, you're probably still annoyed. Anyway, leave a review_.

**I was not lying when I said that there was a reason for everything going the way that it did. More than any other project I've undertaken, this one was a labor which has been plotted out from the beginning until end. True, there are some gaps which I had to fill in, but I knew exactly what was going to happen when for the first two arcs. The third, I'm a bit more up in the air about. First of all; when people break psychologically, they don't recover quickly. The process of dealing with trauma on a mental level is very slow. Unlike Hollywood Psych, improvements do not come quickly in a flash of revelation. Hence, why even though Azula intellectually knew that her mother did not favor Zuko over her, she still felt lingering resentment. Well, that and another reason which gets made explicit at the end of Hatred Arc. Getting beaten that badly is not something you bounce back from in reality; what does not kill you, damn near cripples you, and leaves a nasty scar to remind you for the rest of your days. The trick isn't plotting a proper roaring rampage of revenge, but rather showing that people slowly get better at living with and working around that mass of scar tissue, be it physical or psychological.**

**The first arc was called Fear Arc because that is what Azula had. She was afraid, constantly, even if she didn't realize it and would _NEVER _admit it. In truth, Fear Arc began all the way back in Children of the War Book 2, Chapter 1. From that point onward, Azula was operating on an almost constant influx of terror. It underlied every decision she made. Azula, because of what happened, lost all self-esteem. The only confidence (which has more in common with conceit than the former) she ever derived was from the approval of others. When she was denied that approval, her self-image collapsed. The entire of Fear Arc, she was trying to convince herself that she was something worth fearing, because that was the only way she knew how to control people, because if she didn't control them, they were going to hurt her, like she, deep down, believed that she deserved.**

**The arcs were not named randomly. Next is Hatred Arc, and the ending lies in Hope Arc. Draw from that what you will. As well, there was a breakthrough she made which she hasn't digested yet, namely, that her mother didn't fear her, despise her, and hate her. Ursa loved her children, both and equally, but in different ways. She felt herself a failure because when she left Azula's life, Azula still resented her, and she's been beating herself up over that for quite a few years, now. Azula has the first inklings that Fear is not an effective means of interacting with people, because she knows how terrible it feels. Consider when Azula flirts. She makes people very uncomfortable. That's because she's subconsciously telling her target that she _REALLY _doesn't want this, and the target is understandably put off by that, thus rendering her 'safe'. Each arc has its own breakthrough, and this was the first. The other characters might have parts to play, but this really is Azula's show, after all.**

**Now. Answers to questions: How does Ked reattach his own hand? He's _damned _good. How does he reconstitute Azula's eyes and reaffix her arms? He's _really _damned good. Why did he never use the soul-sapping before now? He's damned _good_. At about this point, if you've read the Azula Trilogy (Master Ghandalf, and I highly recommend) you will find whom I came up with the idea for Ked from. I took Ilook, stripped all of the crazy-evil out of him, and gave him a sibling. The only reference that we have for water-healing is Katara, and she seems to use brute force to solve most problems, whereas Ked, being much weaker, uses finesse and skill. When she and Ked both have to heal people, there are going to be unpleasant words between them. If they don't get into a knife-fight first. And as to why Katara is a bit... vicious... Well, she has done a lot of complaining that she hasn't seen Aang in a while. They _are _married. And she is a healthy, proper-thinking woman. Draw from that what you will.**

**_*_sigh_* Alright_, it's sexual frustration.**

**Jeong Jeong's plan is somewhat short sighted, but is much closer to victory at this moment than ever. Sure, he wanted to stand there and watch as Azula died in front of him, but crippled and mutilated she posed no problem to his goals. Long Feng's are much more insideous. As of this moment, the only thing he needs in order to claim absolute victory is time, because he already has everything he needs in place. Azula's crashed and burned completely when she got jumped (and the swordsman was Ogedai, FYI). Ked's is toast as well, but he had a contingency, admittedly a very provisional and unfocused one, which he is enacting now. Aang is too busy arguing with pushy Earth Kingdom nobles to do anything else. Irukandji is hungry. An internet-cookie if you can see what fanfiction character I drew inspiration for him from.**

**Ugh. This post-script is 1/9th as long as the chapter itself. Well, we're changing gears for Hatred Arc, slowing things down a bit. Now, comes the Rebuild of Azula. This won't be pretty, I guarantee it.**


	9. Azula Always Lies

**Alright. First episode, new arc. I'll answer some questions first. Yer Tonri is the 'sister' of Tenger Etseg. The latter, a god of fire, is also associated with human emotions like rage and anger and sorrow. Yer Tonri is primarily an agriculture goddess (which showcases her relative low status in the pantheon), but is also the mistress of other emotions, notably hope and forgiveness. Azula's eyes are still gold, because that's what Ked had to work with. They are, however, blemished somewhat. She has a mild case of sectoral heterochromia, darker spots of amber against her gold iris. Unfortunately, even though Ked's damned good, what he did was by most accounts impossible, so he made mistakes. Namely, when he gave her back her eyes, he did also gave her a moderate case of Astigmatism. Still, a damned sight better than being blind, no?**

**As for the impostor: Things in that world aren't like here. The media is weak and relatively blind. The reason she and her brother, the children of the most powerful man in the nation, could go utterly undercover amongst what amounted to the Fire Nation's elite resides in the fact that even though Azula is well known for a ruling family member, she's still pretty much completely unknown by the common, and relatively unknown by the high. Bear in mind that the sum total of what Toph Beifong knew about Azula back in Book 2 was 'psychologically unstable'. The impostor was not intended to dupe the likes of Zuko and Mai (the latter of whom would see through her the first time she opened her mouth), but rather, everybody else.**

**What Irukandji wants, and why he didn't just off Azula in Betla, is discussed two chapters from now. And as for who inspired him, Zhang Zhen was a good guess, but his inspiration is not from this fandom. However, there are enough clues just in what you can click on this page (and those beyond it) to figure out where he came from. **

**Now new things: Azula, Smellerbee, and Ked are all the same height. But that means something for each of them. Ked is very short for a Tribesman, at a paltry 5'8". Azula, on the other hand, is just a bit above average for a National, standing 5'8". Bi, on the other hand, is positively gargantuan for an Easterner, _especially _a woman, measuring an impressive 5'8" in height. The peoples of the world show quite a bit of difference in quite a few areas, and that is part of why Tribesmen hold such appeal. Height is an indicator of health and good breeding; the more you grow, the less illness and starvation have stunted you. Since Tribesmen are naturally large, they are seen as ideal genetic stock on an unconscious level. It doesn't hurt that they also have features that all peoples find appealing in some degree or another. Ked is fairly plain for a Tribesman, but he still ranks a 6.5 out of 10. Of course, Sokka's an 8 (as is Azula), and Nurik, whom you shall meet in this chapter and never otherwise see named, is a 35. Yeah, things are rough for Ked. Especially in this chapter. It's like I saved up all the light-hearted torture on him from the previous arc and decided to throw it all at him in one chapter. So yeah. Lighter, softer, and perhaps funnier. And I hope I got the interactions amongst Ked's family right. They are, admittedly, a weird bunch.**

**And in the best news I've had in a while: I've finished writing Hatred Arc. The bitch of things will be writing Hope Arc, because I'm not sure all of what's going on in it.**

* * *

The dream fled with a scream and a flash of fire, scorching away from her. She lurched and fell onto the floor, landing hard. It was cold. Colder than she could ever remember being in her entire life. Her eyes opened wide, and blackness greeted her. Blindness. A hitching sob ratcheted in her throat, as she pushed herself against the hard pallet she had been lying on. "So this is how it ends, isn't it?" she whispered.

She let out a miserable sigh, which ignited with blue fire. For one impossible moment, she could see. When the light snuffed, her arms flew to her face. Hands. She could feel fingers against her cheeks. But how could that be possible? She ran her hand up one forearm blindly, feeling the network of scars along it. But there was one which stood out, hard and thick and perfectly even. It was the kind of scar which she had felt before; Ked's left hand.

"What is this? I don't even..." she muttered. She opened that impossible hand, and let her chi flow to it. A small ball of azure flame ignited above it. The room around her was probably white, because it was painted blue by her light. And as she had felt, she possessed both hands, and obviously enough, both eyes. "So that didn't happen. I never lost my..."

She looked hard at her arms again. Staring her in the face and defying her to contradict, a new scar, fresh and raw. And running the whole circuit of her limb. An amputation, fitted back into place. She quickly rubbed at her eyes, as though trying to ensure that they were actually there, which was rationally absurd considering that without them, she wouldn't be able to see the light she was casting. Her eyelids had the hard irregular ripples of scar tissue on them. And her cheek on one side had a hard narrow line curving up along her nose. How... How...

She got to her feet, feeling a bit unsteady again. Not the way she had when she arose from her psychosis. Then, it had been a terrible weakness, her body atrophied almost to the point of dissolution. Now, she just had a hard time figuring out which way was down. She looked down at herself. She was wearing heavy clothing, furs and very itchy socks which irritated her feet, and only gave a pittance of protection from the cold. She would have to do something about that. But first, she needed to know where she was.

She took a few moments to gather her wits and her balance, before looking around. The room was fitted with a very tight door. An instant of panic shot through her. Locked away again. She heaved at the door and almost fell backwards when it turned out neither latched nor locked. Light flooded into her eyes from a fire-pit at the far end of the broad living area. All of the colors were blues and greys and whites. Water Tribe colors? She didn't feel the ground under her feet swaying, so she couldn't be on a boat. The air was also very, very cold. Oddly, there was a pale-skinned woman humming a pleasant if rambling tune, sitting next to that fire, stitching a pair of gloves back together. She looked up, and her bright amber eyes locked onto Azula's.

"I assume that you had some part in my rescue?" Azula said. Her voice was wet and phlegmatic. She coughed a few times, and cleared the blockage somewhat. "So where am I?" she finished. The woman got to her feet and leaned toward another doorway.

"Ked!" she shouted.

"So it was the barbarian, was it?" Azula asked. The woman made a placating motion, and began to spout gibberish. Slow, deliberate gibberish, as though she knew very well that Azula couldn't understand, and that somehow by speaking louder and slower, she could make herself known. Azula's eyes narrowed. "What the hell are you doing? Speak properly, woman!"

The National in the thick blue parka palmed her forehead in annoyance. Then, she switched gears, speaking in broken, hesitant Tianxia "_You not should be up. Was mauled with bad. Must take the good sleep!_"

"Are you drunk?" Azula asked. The woman muttered something to herself in that gibberish again. As Azula moved into the heart of the room, her mind recognized the cadence and intonations as the same as what Ked would trail into when he was talking to himself or in a taking. "Get out of my way, girl."

The girl tried to block Azula's way again, but carefully, as though afraid to hurt the Princess. "_Older say you not walk. Get lost and hurt. Be bad and make cry_," she attempted. Azula ignored her and pushed open the next door, letting in sunlight, as well as even more piercing cold. As expected for somebody to somebody who spent her life staring into flames, she adjusted to the brightness of sunlight quickly, even though it was far brighter than she expected. In fact, the entire world glared whitely. She could see others walking around below, in the streets, in various blues and greys and reds and greens, moving through streets made of ice and snow. Cold wind tore through her making her shudder. Tribesmen. A lot of them. Azula turned, and the girl was standing close behind her. Azula stared her in the face.

"Where am I?" she asked. The girl glanced from her to the street, then back to her.

"_Water Tribe,_" she answered. "_Home._"

* * *

**Chapter 9: Azula Always Lies**

* * *

Ked could hear the ripple of goodwill announcing her long before she actually appeared. His little sister, so phenotypically unlike those around her, bore down on him with a quite unusual expression for her face; worry. It had been a solid relief when he landed here and found her utterly unharmed. He was sure that Long Feng's revenge would be swift and brutal. Unfortunately for the Easterner, his revenge also drastically underestimated how many friends Benell could call to her aid with a single scream; the frozen heads of those assassins now adorned the Ocean Gate. He quickly tucked the pemmican into the rucksack and faced her. "_Benell, what are you doing here?_"

"_The Fire woman just woke up,_" Benell answered quickly, taking his hand and then he found himself being dragged through the streets. They were much different from the last time he'd been to this place, and even more vastly different than the village he had grown up in; that little thorpe on the ice had been abandoned years ago as the scattered people of the South Water Tribe gathered in the newly-formed Capital of the South. "_She was very confused and angry. I'm fairly sure she insulted me._"

Ked winced. "_I'm sorry about her. She just suffered some..._"

"_I know, Bear, I could see it in her eyes,_" Benell interrupted. She paused briefly. The crowds flowed around them for a moment. Not all of the faces were dark fleshed and blue eyed. With the Weary War over, no few people immigrated in. "_She looked so scared._"

"_I know exactly what you mean,_" Ked said. She started dragging him again, and in no time at all, he was moving up the spiraling balcony of the building block which the outsiders had designed, then contracted in earthbenders to build. To some, it was an almost unforgivable betrayal of culture; the South Water Tribe was always a somewhat nomadic people. Having stone buildings, which wouldn't melt and couldn't be transported, locked them into one place. During the War, the Fire Nation tried to wipe them out with strength of arms. After the war, they switched tactics to cultural colonization.

Of course, it wasn't the Fire Nation's fault. Unlike Uncle Bato, Ked wasn't going to hold a grudge. Besides, it wasn't intentional. This was the first time since the South's crushing defeat by Avatar Yangchen that they started opening themselves to the outside world again. Six hundred years of isolation left many of the young clamoring for something new, something different. And since the primary source of new and different tended to be the Fire Nation, that is what the South lapped up like milk. Strange how Fire and Water tended toward each other so often.

On the fourth floor, two from the top, Benell pulled open the door and shepherded her brother inside. The windows had been shuttered, which was odd considering the relative warmth of the South Pole summer. Thus, the room was relatively dark. The last thing that Ked would have expected was to see Azula sitting next to the fire, staring down at a mirror in her lap, thus, it was exactly that which greeted him. "Azula, thank the gods, you're alright," he said.

She didn't look up at him. "It just keeps getting worse, doesn't it?" she asked, her voice quiet. Benell gave him a concerned glance.

"_She's been talking like that since she figured out where she was. I don't know what she's saying, but I doubt it's good._"

"_It wouldn't be, she's had a very hard life,_" Ked answered. Benell nodded slowly. "Azula, are you alright?"

She looked up at him. Her eyes were still slightly discolored as though bruised, no longer the brilliant and shining gold that they had been. Under one of them was a short scar, curving down from where the monster who cut her original eyes out got lazy and impatient. "Does it look like I'm alright?" she asked bitingly. "Why am I in this wasteland of cold and snow? I should be..."

"What? Back in the Fire Nation, having even more bits cut off of you?" Ked asked, finally losing his temper. He should have known that she was going to find some fault in his decision, but actually hearing it voiced drove him up the wall. "I did the only thing I could do which would keep you safe, and that was take you to a place I knew could be defended. Was it wise? I can't say. But I wasn't exactly in a position to act wisely, now was I?"

"_Calm down, Bear! She's fragile and you're being mean,_" Benell said, tugging on Ked's arm. His outrage faltered, as it often did when his little sister reminded him of his irrationality. He took a calming breath.

"How long?" she asked.

"You arrived here the day before yesterday," Ked said. "You slept the entire week it took to reach the Pole. I was... I was worried that I might have lost you to the fugue again."

Azula turned down to stare at her reflection again. "And nobody even noticed that I wasn't me. Didn't they?"

"Azula," Ked said, barely even noticing that he'd dropped the appellation he'd added to distance himself from her. "This isn't the time to worry about some war that doesn't want you."

She closed her eyes and let out a low sigh.

"That didn't come out right," Ked muttered. "I'm sorry. I really am, but I didn't have a choice. I either brought you here or let those sons of bitches kill you slowly, and that wasn't a choice at all."

"Why did you do it?" Azula asked quietly, setting aside that mirror with deliberate care. Like she was afraid if she didn't do it with utmost precision, it was going to fly across the room and shatter against the wall. She had a bad relationship with mirrors, it seemed.

Ked couldn't answer that question, not with his little sister standing right next to him, even if there was about a snowball's chance in the Fire Nation of her understanding it. "You should rest."

"I asked you a question," she said, glancing aside at him.

"Why does it matter?" Ked asked. "I did. You're safe. Will a deep breakdown of the specifics help you in any way? Sometimes you just have to accept that things are the way that they are and leave it at that."

"They beat me," Azula said quietly, her face pulling into a rictus of pain. "I was at the top of my form and three random thugs beat me. Why can't I do anything right?"

"Azula, don't do this to yourself," Ked said, moving to her side and raising her gaze up to his. It wasn't until he was already doing so that he realized he had his hands on her shoulders. Shockingly, she didn't glare or rail at him for doing so. "You can't blame yourself for this. And you can't keep blaming yourself for something that other people expected impossibly of you."

"You don't know," Azula said. "You weren't there."

"Maybe not. But I'm _here_ now, and so are you. If you keep reliving the past, you can't ever move on from it," he said.

"How did you do it?" Azula asked, her gaze dropping again. Her shoulders tucked in, like she was trying to draw in on herself. "If they beat me, how did you..."

"_Benell, give us some room,_" Ked said, interrupting her question mercifully. Benell gave him a suspicious look, but went into the back room and closed the door. He turned and pulled some water from his sister's water flask into a hand. Focusing on that hatred and rage, that unstoppable and undeniable force he had felt tearing through his heart, he watched as the water clinging to his hand darkened until it was blacker than the darkest of nights. "I used this."

Azula stared at it, leaning away almost unconsciously. "I know," Ked continued. "As far as I can tell, it's an inverse of my form of healing. Where the latter infuses my energy into your body using waterbending, this... tears out the soul and grafts it into me. You want to know how I beat all of those people? I burned a man's soul to see you safe," he shuddered, and that blackness vanished. "And I don't know if I can ever forgive myself for it."

"Because I'm not worth saving," Azula muttered.

"Because I made myself unworthy of saving you," he corrected darkly. "This is... a sin against the gods. I took a soul and I tore it to shreds, wove it through my waterbending, just for a brief increase in strength."

"So you regret coming after me?" she asked. He frowned at her.

"Not for an instant," he said. He leaned a bit closer. "Why are you so sure you're not worth saving?"

"Because I'm a monster," Azula said quietly. "You should have just let them kill me. It's what I deserve."

"According to who?" he asked, a kernel of anger growing in him again. "Who told you you weren't worth caring about?"

"It doesn't matter."

"Maybe it does to me," Ked said. "Azula, you are powerful, brilliant, cunning, and beautiful," she made to complain, but he cut her off, "yes, even after everything, you still are. You're also much more moral than you give yourself credit for. I know how much your father's Burnt Earth plan horrified you. How even though you flipped out on those people in Jang Hui, it wasn't until _after_ you saved them. You are not a monster, Azula. Not in any sense of the word."

Still staring down, tears formed in her eyes. "Then why do I feel like one?"

"I don't know," Ked said. "I wish I did. I wish I could help."

Azula slowly got to her feet and moved toward the door to the outside. She paused, tweezing her brow as her face pulled into a rictus of discomfort. "Gah. Headache... I'm going for a walk," she said unsteadily.

"Do you want some company?" Ked offered, but she stared at him like he was something she feared and didn't understand. Without another word said, she opened the door and vanished out into the streets. Ked let out a low sigh, putting the water he'd gathered back into his sister's water flask. It was like he was absolutely powerless. There was so much he wanted to do to help her, but he knew that he couldn't do a single thing unless she wanted help. Why couldn't she accept it?

He started to turn it over in his head. He'd dealt with a lot of people in his two years as doctor at that hospital. The melancholic and the manic, the psychotic and the catatonic. The way she was acting wasn't strictly any of those; she was more like Yasuke's wife, whom he'd met on several occasions. She was a timid woman, almost clinically incapable of making her own decisions. He started drawing connections between the two. There was an obvious difference, in that where Miya tended to glom onto people, Azula pushed them away, but under that... He looked up, as the door to the back room opened, and Benell joined him again.

"_Where did she go?_" Benell asked.

"_I don't know,_" Ked said. "_Out_."

"_And you didn't go with her?_" Benell asked incredulously.

"_She didn't want me to,_" Ked said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. Benell rolled her eyes with a weary sigh on her exasperated face. "_I can't force myself on her. She's not like you or the others from the village. She can't handle people very well._"

"_Yeah, well, sometimes it's not about what they want, but what they need,_" she pointed out. "_Come on, Bear, I've never seen you this mopey before! Do you want her or not?_"

Ked's back straightened in surprise. "_What are you talking about?_"

Her easy smile turned patronizing. "_Please. Like I didn't notice how you look at her. I've never seen somebody so ga-ga since Mika discovered boys. If you want her, you have to do something about it and not sit here and mope._"

Ked let out a laugh. "_You do realize __I'm__ supposed to be the one giving __you__ advice on your love life, little sister?_"

Benell grinned wide, then gave her older brother a hug. He hissed a bit when doing so rubbed against the raw, only somewhat healed burns on his shoulders. "_Maybe when you mature a bit, you will_," she said sweetly.

"_Wiseass_."

"_Don't make me get Mom wash your mouth out._"

"_I'm twenty years old, Benell. I'm well past the age when my mother can scold me for bad language._"

Benell leaned past him with a smirk. "_Oh really?_" she asked. Ked turned quickly, eyes widening, but there was nobody standing behind him. When he turned back to his sister, she was trying very, very hard not to laugh.

"_You are such a brat,_" he pointed out, at which point she dissolved into laughter. But she wasn't wrong. He'd sat around moping long enough.

* * *

Jeong Jeong stared at the people gathered before him. Yu Yan archers, rhino riders, firebenders, and bounty hunters of quite a few descriptions, none of them flattering. They had about as much of a chance as he in a beauty contest, but he was not about to keep screwing this up. He had ample opportunity to kill that little child when she was growing up, but as the hateful spirit kept reminding him, something else just kept coming up. He had even considered just having his men open her throat in the bath, but he wouldn't believe that woman dead unless he burnt her into ashes himself. And since he didn't doubt that even mutilated, she would come back to haunt him, he opted to make a preemptive strike. Long Feng had signed off on the expenditure and gave it his blessing, but did nothing himself. Of course. He was leaving it to somebody else to pay the butcher's bill.

"This will not be an easy assignment," Jeong Jeong said loudly, and harshly. He had to drive some things into their thick heads. People had a tendency toward self destruction if not given a brutally controlling hand. And the truth was, he was just too old and too busy to do this himself. "You are all tasked with hunting down a pretender to the position of Fire Lord. She will look, sound, and even claim to be Azula, but she will be distinct in her plentiful scars. When you do this, remember that there is no reward for bringing her to me alive. I only want her head, unattached to any other part of her."

That would weed out the more scrupulous mercenaries. But there was something else he had to take care of. If they weren't given that strict hand, they would no doubt turn on each other the instant they cleared the walls of Grand Ember. "And there is one other proviso. If you undertake this task, you will be working for flat fee, albeit a very generous one. Any attempts to kill your coworkers to collect their shares will result in the forfeiture of your own. There will be no competition in this endeavor, gentlemen. She is a dangerous opponent, and you will need to be focused on destroying her rather than each other. If you fail because you cannot heed this proviso, you will be hunted down and killed like a duck. Is that clear?"

"You seem a bit concerned about this," Mongke said quietly.

Jeong Jeong shot the burly man a glare. "And you know why. Gentlemen? Any questions, direct them to Mongke. That is all. Dismissed."

"I've half a mind to ride out there with them, for what that bastard did to Vachir," Mongke muttered.

"You've half a mind to begin with," Jeong Jeong pointed out unpleasantly. "Half a mind you had better use toward keeping tabs on the outlander. I know he is planning something, intending to use Azula's escape to his advantage somehow. You must prevent whatever it is he's planning."

"I think you're getting a bit paranoid in your old age," Mongke said. "Azula on the lose screws him just as much as it screws you."

"You will remember your place, soldier," Jeong Jeong said. Mongke let out a low snort, like an annoyed bull, before ending his lean and walking off of the platform and shepherding the more lackadaisical of the mercenaries out by his presence alone. This was an untenable situation that rash action could only make worse.

"Of course, you'd be the one to think that," Irukandji's voice came from the doorway, instantly setting Jeong Jeong's teeth to grind. "You're a remarkably stuck up prig sometimes. Has anybody else ever told you that?"

"I much preferred when you were a bad memory," the Firemaster said as he walked past. Aggravatingly, the abomination followed, keeping pace with the firebender. "I grow tired of your jibes and your insanity. You must have something better to do with your time."

"You'd think so, but until now, no, I didn't," Irukandji said with an aggravating smirk. The smirk grew, into a grin showing too many teeth. "But things have changed. With the little girl on her own again, I think it's time for that little reunion I was planning."

Jeong Jeong was actually pleased to hear that. With any luck, Azula would kill him and Jeong Jeong wouldn't ever have to suffer the creature's presence ever again. "Then go. I will not stop you."

"Like you even could," the monster in the shaman's skin said, before reaching over and ruffling Jeong Jeong's hair. Only monumental self-control prevented the Firemaster from snapping a bolt of lightning at the creature. And it wouldn't have mattered anyway, because over the course of the next two steps, Irukandji dissolved, like silk burning away only without flame, until only a few motes of darkness remained. Those motes slid into a shadow, and vanished. Jeong Jeong made very sure to keep his eyes ahead of him, and headed into another part of the garrison of the newly independent Grand Ember.

In truth, this place was never intended to be the medical wing, but because the riots accidentally burnt down the proper facilities near the edge of town, this was serving more or less the same function. He moved past the people trying to tend to those who's injuries would take longer than the three weeks since the riots ended to heal, and towards one form who remained silent, sitting on a bench. If one didn't know him very well, one would say the giant of a man was waiting for something. Oddly, they'd be right. Jeong Jeong knew just how true that was.

Jeong Jeong stopped, looking down at the shaven-headed man. "You were wondering when I would be calling on your services? I do so now," Jeong Jeong said. The man with the blazingly intense brown eye stared up at him. In truth, he only had about half of his face left. Considering how much else he had lost, it actually fit with the motif he had created in himself. "Your target is Princess Azula, the real Princess, not the facsimile in the palace. You are to kill her at your first opportunity. Is that clear?"

The firebender rose to his feet. One foot landed with the paff of a well worn leather boot. The other hit the ground with the clang of iron. The man rose to his full height, glaring down with that featureless iron mask covering roughly the right half of his face. There was a burning eye painted over where his right eye once was, and the tattoo in the center of his brow had somehow survived both him blowing himself up, and his disastrous fall with a goodly portion of the Western Air Temple. How he managed to survive at the bottom of that canyon was almost a thing of legend. But he was an extremely valuable agent, because Jeong Jeong knew what he was fighting for. He would never achieve it, of course; such things were impossible. But as long as he thought it could happen, Jeong Jeong could control him.

The firebender with the iron hand and leg stared down at him, and gave him one solemn nod. It was as much of a contract as this killer would give. And it was as much as Jeong Jeong needed. "Then go. And do not return until she is dead," he said, and the killer walked away.

Paff.

Clang.

Paff.

Clang.

* * *

In a way, Azula welcomed the cold. It was piercing, tearing through all of the substantial amount of clothing that she was wearing, and it was distracting. If she had been more attentive in her youth, she would have known there were many ways a firebender could ignore, repulse, or nullify that cold, but she had always been most interested in combat applications, so gave the utility something of a miss. The South Pole was nothing like she had expected, like she had been educated. She was told of tiny villages, ringed by walls of crudely cut snow, of people huddling around fires at all times of the year to prevent frostbite. Instead, they had a city. A proper city. The unexpected brightness drove an ice-pick into her eyes, a throbbing pain gathered in the sides of her head that got worse the longer she was in the light. She expected it to be cold and dark at the pole. She managed to be only half right.

It wasn't just the architecture which came as a surprise. The faces down here were not all barbarian faces. Amongst the masses which moved through the streets in the glaring, headache-inducing sun, were also the pluggy forms and green eyes of East Continent people. And even a few of her countrymen, pale skinned and black haired, were amongst the waterbenders and Tribesmen. What had become of her world? They were supposed to be at each other's throats, a state of constant combat of one nation against all. But not here. And she didn't understand why.

In her mind, she went back to the many lessons she'd had about the world. Lo and Li were already old crones by the time Azula was born, so it came as no surprise that their lessons on history and foreign nations were about as dry as stale bread. And, by the looks of things, misinformation. Propaganda. That made sense. It wasn't a good kind of sense, because it meant that she had spent the better part of her life willfully blind, but better to realize blindness then to fumble in ignorance. At least, that's what her rational mind said. The rest of it wanted to hide in a corner somewhere, for reasons she was trying very hard to ignore.

Azula shamed herself with a clipped cry of shock when an arm looped around her shoulders and a weight pulled down at her. A braying laugh, quite unfeminine but unsurprising considering its source, sounded. Bi smelled strongly of liquor, and her breath stank of other less savory substances. She also looked like she just crawled out of a garbage heap, and walked unsteadily. "There you are! I was wondering when you were gonna wake up. Here I thought you were just gonna stay inside your crazy for the _next_ six years."

"You are drunk," Azula said cuttingly.

"No," Smellerbee leaned back, motioning towards herself daintily, "I _was_ drunk. Now I am hung over."

"The spirits might mark a distinction but I do not," Azula said.

"You really need to get laid," Bi laughed. "Trust me, it does a wonder for your state of mind."

"Like you'd know," Azula said. Bi grinned. Azula sighed. "_Really_? You've been here one day, and already..."

"I should have come here years ago!" Bi said loudly, spinning around and almost falling over. "So many hotties, all lookin' for something new and exciting! It's like I've died and gone to heaven, only heaven was filled with fit and nubile Tribesmen! Even the old ones are gorgeous!"

"And your shameful behavior doesn't bother you in the slightest?" Azula asked, starting to walk again. Smellerbee walked with her.

"Shameful? What's shameful about it? We swapped war stories, we both get a kick out of killing firebenders, one thing led to another," she trailed off, with that post-coital grin. Azula rolled her eyes hard.

"Do me at least one favor, and don't ever talk about this in front of me again," Azula muttered. "I honestly don't understand what you see in these people. They're too tall, too dark, and too _barbarian_ to offer any but the most fleeting entertainment."

"Trust me, it was anything but fleeting. I only regained the ability to use my legs..."

"Stop. Now."

Smellerbee laughed. "Prude. You have no idea what you're missing."

"I'm sure I'll survive," she said darkly.

Bi's laughter petered out, and she got a serious look on her odd looking face. She narrowed her brown eyes and leaned in a bit closer. "Huh. That's not good," she said. "I've seen that look before, on an old buddy of mine called Sneers. He got that look after the Avatar swept through. As I hear it, he jumped off of a tree head first the next morning."

"I'm fine," Azula lied. She was not fine. She was a failure.

"All the same, I think Ked might want me to stick with you so you don't try going for a swim. Well, in the ocean, anyway. These people have a magnificent bath house."

"I'd have to see that to believe it," Azula countered. Bi shrugged, and pointed to a large stone structure they were passing by with a wooden bridge leading to it. It needed the bridge, because all of the ice around it was molten into water, and heat radiated off of the roof. Of course, that wasn't what captured Azula's attention.

It was the men. The front of the bath house was open, and there were a number of young men there, in various states of undress, some utterly. One in particular turned toward her. He was very tall, his body the sort of fit that only came from years of living rough and surviving on his skills. Every muscle, carved to perfection, was sheathed in dark, supple skin which glistened with beads of sweat. His eyes were like brilliant pools of water. He smiled, and Azula found herself unable to look away. Well, from him, because her eyes eventually did move lower, to the rippling abdomen, to the muscular thighs, and that which lay between them. Her eyes went wide as a flush came to her cheeks.

And then she walked into a post.

Bi burst into uproarious laughter as Azula tried to get her bearings. She was lying flat on her back, and that beautiful man was staring down at her, concern replacing the easy smile on his gorgeous face. He yammered something she couldn't understand, and she batted his hands away from her. It was bad enough that she got distracted by a naked Tribesman – regardless of how unbelievably pretty he was – but her humiliation only seemed to grow by leaps and bounds with him standing over her. She forced herself to her feet. "No, stay back, don't touch me!" she said. The young man, still looking concerned even though he was barefoot and naked on snow, shot a glance to Bi. She shrugged. He said something else, before giving her a nod and walking back into the bath house. And the entire way back, she couldn't tear her eyes off of his bum.

"I told ya this place was _awesome_," Bi said.

"You are a slattern and should be ashamed of yourself," Azula said, only then tearing her eyes away from the scene. It was obscene. And yet averting her eyes was about as easy as tearing out her own teeth.

"I'm not the one who got distracted by the sexy and walked into a post," Bi pointed out.

Azula thought some very dark thoughts about a certain former child-soldier. But as she walked away, her mind turned to other things. She was alone. She had no allies, nobody she could control. Well... maybe not. Were she a lesser woman, she would have disregarded what had just happened to her out of embarrassment, but epiphany could come from many sources. There was still control to be had. She just had to sacrifice to get it.

* * *

The whip snapped with an audible crack, the first that he'd managed in about five minutes. His form was frankly terrible, but considering that he'd never given more than lip-service to the martial part of elemental martial arts before, it was a vast improvement. Father had arrived not long ago, and was working to make dinner. Mother, on the other hand, was sitting next to the wall, clapping and complimenting him on every waterbending Kata which didn't obviously blow up in his face.

"_Yes, she does the same thing with me,_" Benell answered the unasked question.

"_What? Am I not allowed to be proud of my two warrior children?_" Sedna asked with a warm smile. Benell had obviously taken after her mother in at least that regard.

"_First of all, I'm not a warrior, and second, I'm screwing up a lot more than I'm succeeding,_" Ked said. But Mother was having none of it. The door opened, and the wayward pair reentered the house. Ked took a step toward them, but paired glares by Bi and Benell put him back into his place. "I didn't think you'd be out this long," Ked said in her native tongue, because it was obvious she couldn't speak his. "I thought you hated the cold."

"I do. With growing vehemence," Azula said.

"Funny how you don't ask where I've been," Bi said with a grin. Sedna got to her feet, and quickly wrapped the soldier woman in a hug. Bi let out a string of shocked profanities. "I thought she couldn't speak Tianxia!"

"_I know that look anywhere!_" Sedna said brightly. At times like this, it was hard to remember that she was Ked's mother. "_So who's the lucky fellow? I assume you're going to stay with him if it catches, we can always use an infusion of outside blood._"

"_Mom, can we __not__ talk about this in front of company?_" Ked said, embarrassment rising in him. Bi gave a perplexed look. "She wants to know who you had sex with," He said wearily.

"Really? She just out and asked that?" Bi asked.

"My parents. Can't live with them, can't abandon them on an iceberg."

Bi looked oddly at the woman. "Are you sure this is your mother? She doesn't look much older than me."

"She was _sixteen_ when she had me," Ked said, with a sigh. "If you don't answer her question, she's going to pester you for the rest of the night."

"Well, a lady never kisses and tells," she said, haughtily. Then, with a chuckle; "But I've gotta say, I've never seen a giant, grey eyed Tribesman before."

Ked stared at her, his mind running down the list of people who had those features and could speak Tianxia. The list was vanishingly small, which meant he knew, by his luck, exactly who it had to be. "Bato?" he asked.

"I think that's what he said his name was."

"Really? He's old enough to be your father!" Ked said, with a strangled tone.

"_Oh, Bato!_" Sedna said, patting her on the shoulder with a knowing look. "_He does need somebody in his life. Ever since..._"

"_Mom!_" Ked shouted. He turned back to Bi. "...Tell me you did not just have a one-night-stand with Uncle Bato."

Bi smirked. "Then I won't tell you."

Azula laughed outright at that. If Ked could have, he'd have turned red with embarrassment. There should be international law preventing these sorts of situations: spending an evening with Ked's parents would have been classified as an act of war. Even though Ogan had not yet said a word, it was just a matter of time before he did something to horrify everybody present.

Needless to say, after growing up with_ those two_ for parents, hell held no terror for Ked.

With topics moved off from Bi having an affair with a member of Ked's family to the more sedate, or at least quiet, topic of eating, with Ogan setting out the fare. Bi rambled on about the various things she'd encountered over the last two days in this city. They weren't news to Ked, since he was here when they first built the bath-house, and the prospect of public nudity held no visceral reaction in him. Yes, you could see the Tribesmen inside from the street. No, they didn't care if you looked. Why would they? Well, the Northerners would, but they were stuck-up prigs for the most part anyway.

It wasn't until Bi actually started tucking in to some of the more local cuisine – and drinking enough of the local wine to kill twelve of the local elk – that she broke off from the little diatribe she had been on, although this was to lurch to her feet, spitting, sputtering, and cursing. "What the hell was that? It was like I was eating semi-congealed death!"

Even Azula gave Bi an odd look at that. She took her own portion of pemmican and bit in, eating it slowly and uncritically. "Semi-congealed death? I've had far worse," she said distantly. "One would think you'd lower your palate after so many years as a terrorist."

"_I'm sorry about her. She's not used to the local food,_" Ked said. But Ogan waved the problem away.

"_It's alright. It's like that garbage in the East Continent; an acquired taste,_" he said, probably the first thing this evening. That, however, opened the floodgate. "_I notice your lady friend __has__ acquired the local flavor. Brought her dinner, have you?_"

He was glancing significantly at Azula, who was shaking her head at Smellerbee's dramatic hacking and scraping at the tongue. "_It was the easiest food to get into her,_" Ked said with a shrug. While she was catatonic, it was hard to get food into Azula without having her choke. So he'd pretty much fed her on broth and pemmican for three and a half years. In a way, he was a bit amazed that she could 'remember' that she'd eaten it before. "_And I wouldn't call her my lady, really._"

"_Seriously?_" Ogan said, scratching his blocky, shaven head. "_You're telling me you haven't slept with her yet?_"

"_Tui La, will this never end? No, Dad! I am not having sex with Azula!_" Ked shouted.

"What about me?" Azula asked.

"I'm not hav... My father has a twisted mind."

Azula smirked. "I'm sure he does."

Unable to stand his parents any longer, he took his dinner with him into the back room. Most outsiders would wonder why each dwelling in the Capital of the South only had two rooms. Conversely, locals would wonder why each dwelling had more than one; the concept of having separate rooms for members of the family was a very recent import, and as it was, the adults still tended to bed down in the main room, while the children all bunked together in the back. Technically, Azula was sleeping in Benell's room. And it was in Benell's room that Ked took refuge.

It was distinctly unfair that Ked had the parents he did. None of the other people he grew up with were nearly so burdened with embarrassing progenitors. Seqet only had his father, and Maami _technically_ had two mothers, and Master Katara's father Hakoda made the odd choice of marrying a firebender, but still, at their worst, they were less than half as bad as Ogan and Sedna could be. At least those other people had the decency, if you caught them doing something unseemly, to stop when they realized you were there. No such luck with Ked and Benell's parents. Of course, those two were pretty much the archetype for romantic love in the Tribe for as long as Ked could remember. It had been love at first sight, sex later that evening, and marriage four days later when Mom's parents found out about it. They'd been damned well _blissfully_ wed ever since.

It was a few hours later when the voices quieted in the room outside, hours he spent reading and waiting for the embarrassment to stop. In that quiet, he hazarded to open the door, to see what had happened beyond. Doing so, Azula almost fell into him, pushing from the other side of the door. She was alone, the others departed who-knows-where. "I'm... sorry about my parents," Ked said uncomfortably. "They don't exactly know when to stop talking."

"They certainly did a lot of talking," Azula said. "What was it that inspired that outburst out of you? It must have been very insulting."

"Everybody gets embarrassed by their parents sometimes," Ked said, trying to get the focus off of him and his messed up family.

"I don't," she said quietly, her eyes downcast. It was a very atypical look for Azula. He took a step back, letting her into the room. She sat down on the bench built out of the shorter wall, atop the mounds of animal skins used for cushioning. "My parents never embarrassed me. They barely even acknowledged me," she said. She stared at the floor. "I was the most powerful firebender of ten generations and to them, I was worthless."

"I'm sure they didn't think that," Ked said, sitting down beside her.

"You don't know my parents," Azula said. "Mother was... incapable of speaking to me when I needed it, and _Father_ was unwilling to. So where did that leave me?"

"I guess I can't understand," Ked admitted. "I always knew, for all they were a pain, that my parents loved me. Not everybody gets to have that."

"My mother loved me..." she whispered. She looked up at the fire at the far end of the room. "Past tense, of course. Now, I'm all alone again."

"You're not alone," Ked said. Azula shivered, and Ked got to his feet, stoking up the fire a bit for her benefit. He knew that, as a West Continent native, she would feel the cold much more sharply than he. The fire began to blaze brighter, the heat pushing him back a bit. "I just want you to know that. You aren't the monster that you think you are...?"

Ked's word trailed long when he turned around to see Azula standing behind him, very close, staring at him with those golden eyes. And at some point, she had quietly sloughed her heavy clothing. His eyes went wide, and his tongue tied itself in a knot for all he was able to speak at the moment. "You always were loyal to me, weren't you?" Azula said, slinking a bit closer. But the way she did it actually made Ked take a step back; it was as though she were trying to be seductive, but getting everything just wrong enough to get the opposite reaction that he knew he should be having. "I think it's time that I rewarded that loyalty."

"I...ah...what?" Ked asked, backing into a wall next to the fireplace.

"You want me, don't you?" she asked, that smirk on her face. "I saw the way your eyes rested on me, the desire you had. You wanted my body since the very beginning, didn't you? Well, maybe you've earned some use of it."

"Earned some..." Ked shook his head, taking her shoulders and holding her at arm's length. "Azula, think about what you're doing. This isn't you."

"And what would you know about me?" she asked, taking another step forward, overpowering his grasp and pressing against him. He could feel his heart hammering in his chest. "Maybe I want this as much as you do."

"Azula, this isn't right!" he said. She tried to silence him with a kiss, but he swerved his head away. She took the opportunity to rake her teeth along his neck, instead. "Ooooh. No! Azula stop!"

"You don't want me to stop," Azula said.

"Why are you doing this?" Ked asked, feeling a wash of panic. It was bizarre. Part of him wanted to just give in, but the larger part was crushing that former under its heel, and demanding that he _see_. With a monumental effort, not just physically but mentally, he managed to push her back to arm's length. "You don't owe me anything, Azula, you really don't. You don't have to do this."

"Yes, I do," Azula said, very earnestly, very forcefully. Almost desperately. "You went above and beyond all call of duty to save me from certain death. The very least I can do is offer you some... comfort."

"No, you don't. Calm down and think about this rationally," he pleaded. Her expression shifted to almost completely empty. "Good. Now please, tell me why you..."

Ked was cut off when she grabbed his arm and twisted, hurling him through the air and landing him on his back in the center of the room. Stars flit in his vision from the rough landing. As he started to get his bearings back, she leapt atop him, tearing his shirt off of him and running her hands along his chest, and the rippling scars on his shoulders. "It takes a certain kind of man to get the Dragon's Wings for a woman," she said with a feral, desperate grin. She began to work at his pants, and Ked's eyes went very wide. "_This_ is what you want. This is all anybody ever wants. So just lie back and accept it."

"No, stop this!" Ked said. He tried to move her, but she quickly pinned his hands to his sides with her knees, grabbing both sides of his head with her hands. "Azula, no! You can't want it like this! This is wrong!"

"It doesn't matter what I want, it never did," Azula said. "So just do what you know you want to. I won't stop you," she said, her voice starting to quiver. Ked sensed that he had only a moment of vulnerability to exploit, and he dare not pass it up. He hooked his leg up and pulled her off of his body, before lurching forward and pinning her down, her arms at her sides. Her face was tightened in grim expectation, turned away. "Alright. This is what you always wanted. THIS IS WHAT I DESERVE! Now _take it_!"

"I'm not going to," Ked said, breathing hard for his exertion. She opened one eye, glancing at him, then faced him square. She was still hard as a board under him, bracing herself for... Ked's violation of her. "I won't do this, Azula. I can't."

"Yes, you will! It's what you want! It's all any man wants! So do it! I _order you_ to do it!"

"No, Azula! _I don't want this_!" Ked shouted.

"You don't want..." she said, staring up at him. Her eyes suddenly filled with tears, a sob ratcheting at her throat, and she erupted into weeping. Ked quickly moved aside, and she curled up on the floor like a child trying to protect herself from a beating. The only sounds were her weeping, the only motions the shaking of her shoulders as she was curled tight. Ked stared at her a moment in confusion, before pulling a rug around her and carefully lifting her to the bed. She didn't resist him in the slightest.

She kept weeping, and he felt that same feeling he had the first night she was conscious, the night with the mirror. That overwhelming urge to give her comfort and try to bring joy to a shattered life. She was curled in the bed, and he slipped under the covers with her, his arm around her shoulder. His hand traced slow circles in the ridges and valleys of the scars on her back, as she wept onto his chest. He just stayed there, holding her close, as she slowly cried herself hoarse.

Unable to do anything else, Ked began to sing quietly, the song he'd written for her. Of her. He was not a particularly attractive Tribesman, by their standards; many were better looking than he. But if he had one grace, it was a decent singing voice. The soft song slipped into her like warmth from the fire, and the sobbing slowly quieted. She finally drifted into a sleep hopefully less dire than the world she walked awake. Her breathing evened out, but he still didn't want to let go. It felt like he'd be betraying her if he did. So he looked out the window. He couldn't see the waning moon, but he knew it was up by now.

"_I'm trying, Yue, I really am,_" Ked said in prayer. "_I've done everything I can, but it never seems to be enough. I don't know if I can help her. Gods, why can't I even help the one person who needs it the most? Why can't I heal the woman I love?_"

But, as usual, Yue was silent to him.

* * *

The royal palace of the South, if it could even be called that, was a far cry from its counterpart in Grand Fire, or even its sister city in the North. Whereas those buildings had been built for grandeur and the inspiration to awe, this was almost more of a fortress, albeit a well decorated one. It served its function well, since if anybody attacked the South again, they would break their teeth not just against the hostile ice, but against the stone of the inner walls. It was good to see that there would be no more purges of the South, not by anybody. As a waterbender, Katara definitely appreciated that.

It had been a while since she had been home. Months in the Fire Nation with Zuko and Mai, and before that no short time on Kyoshi Island dealing with a summit of the southern Earth Kingdoms. It was the job that, had she been born in the North, she would have been born to. Of course, had she been born in the north, she would never have become the waterbender she was today. It would take at least two generations to cleanse the taint of misogyny from the practices of the North Water Tribe. She just hoped to see it come before she died of old age.

She swept aside the felt hanging, made from the skins of dangerous and difficult to hunt creatures which separated the public section of the palace from the private. Also unlike the Fire Nation or the North, the South's palace was comparatively tiny, so she didn't need to search at all to find her father, sitting back on a chair heaped with mole-r bear skins, chin on his knuckles, looking more than a little bored. The man he was talking with was a representative of Great Whales, copper-haired and oddly accented, and if her past experiences were any judge, was talking about fishing and fishing rights in the South Polar Seas. As dry a topic as the oceans weren't.

Hakoda perked up when he noticed his daughter enter, and adopted a more regal pose, interrupting the emissary with a gesture. "If it's all the same to you, I would prefer if we continue this some other time. The hour is late, and I doubt we'll fish the oceans bare in the next twelve hours."

The man blustered for a moment, but when he turned and saw Katara, he actually flinched a bit. Katara didn't know what that reaction was all about, but she had been getting it fairly frequently from Whaleshmen she encountered for the last few years. He yammered something in his own tongue, which Hakoda nodded to, and then the man quickly shuffled away, giving Katara a fairly wide berth. Once he'd gone past, Katara moved to her father, and quickly broke into a grin, catching her father in a tight embrace. "It's been a while," she said warmly.

"Any time is too long when family is away," Hakoda agreed. The two parted, and he rose, stretching the kinks out of his back to a chorus of soft pops and crunches. His hair was greying more heavily now than it had been even during the War; it was as though the conflict was somehow maintaining his youth, and without it, he was finally starting to look the almost fifty years of age he was. Of course, being the High Chief of the South might have something to do with that. "And Sokka still hasn't come home. I'm beginning to think all that time near the equator has just melted him away."

"Oh, he's around," Katara said, following as he went through a more conventional door and into the living areas. Like the rest of the fortress, these were very functional, but nevertheless seemed out of place compared to the way most Southerners still chose to live. For one thing, every person living here had their own room. "I saw him a couple of weeks ago. He's well, if in a bit of a state, with the problems in the West."

"Yes, I heard that there was a conflict on the horizon," Hakoda said. "A civil war."

"You remember Azula?" Katara asked.

"The Fire Lord's sister? Vaguely. I recall her trying to kill me a few times," he said.

"She somehow managed to escape the mental hospital Zuko was keeping her. Sokka's been after them ever since. And now, she's gotten about a third of the Fire Nation taking up arms against Zuko," she shook her head with a sigh. "I wish Aang didn't have so much to do in the East. This would be so simple if we could just get everybody together and go after her. It's been so long since our little family was together. I miss everybody," she let out a laugh. "Tui La, even though she could be a pain, I miss Ty Lee, too."

"It's astounding the connections we make in our youth, and how they carry through with our lives," Hakoda nodded. He opened another door, peeking through. Inside was a sullen looking twelve year old, pale skinned and bright eyed. "_Now are you going to apologize to your mother?_"

"_No!_" the girl said defiantly. Hakoda sighed.

"_Then you can stay in here until you're ready to,_" he said in Tianxia, closing the door. He looked at his daughter. "There was a bit of a shouting match this morning. Jei is still a little upset about it, but you have to teach children there are consequences to the things they do."

"What was she angry about?"

"She's too young to date," Hakoda said.

"That's it?" Katara asked. "You started trying to reel in Mom at that age."

Hakoda let out a nervous laugh. "Well, don't tell Mika that, alright? It's only in the last year that she stopped demanding to go back to the Fire Nation. I guess it's do as I say, not as I do."

"You're trying. That's worth something," Katara said idly. She let out a sigh. "Still, I can see her point. It's not easy being separated from all the familiar faces. Sent to a place where you don't speak the language, where almost nobody looks like you. It's a bit of a shock to her."

"I can imagine," Hakoda said. He leaned against a wall for a moment. He perked back up. "Speaking of familiar faces, your old student came back to the city not too long ago."

"Which one? Gyenna? Muosi? Arnuk?" she asked.

"No, the other one. The one Sokka used to torment... What was his name? Sedna and Ogan's boy."

Katara's eyes went wide, her heart missing a beat. "Ked?" she asked. Hakoda nodded, a smile pulling at his face.

"That's the one. One would think I'd remember, but there are so many..."

"Ked's the one who helped Azula escape," Katara said, turning to the door.

"Wait a second, what are you doing?"

"I'm going to finish what my brother couldn't," Katara said, running her hand over the flask at her hip. There was no greater betrayal then a man against his Tribe, and she was going to remind Ked of that.

* * *

Ked hadn't slept. Azula was sleeping, quite possibly peacefully, too, but his mind was spinning, trying to understand what had happened. Why would she act like that, inciting him with all of her strength to... rape her? It didn't make sense. His pondering was interrupted when the door opened and his little sister poked her head in. Her eyes widened at the sight. She pointed between the two of them and then made a sinuous and suggestive gesture, ending with a shrug. Ked blushed and furiously shook his head, denying that things were as they appeared. Carefully, he slipped out from around Azula, eliciting a light grumble from the firebender, before he wrapped a skin around himself and went into the outer room.

"I thought you two were having..." Benell began happily, but trailed off in concern when the she saw the look on his face. "Oh, my gods, what's wrong?"

"There is something seriously, dangerously wrong with her," he said quietly, leaning against the wall. "It's like she wants me to _hurt_ her. She thinks she deserves to suffer, and I can't understand why."

"What did she do?" Benell asked. Ked pondered for a moment, but knew that he needed to talk to somebody, and his sister was always the sounding board he used in the past. She was a font of useful, if occasionally idealistic and naïve, knowledge. By the time he'd finished relating what the royal had done, and how she reacted, his sister's amber eyes were wide, and her mouth agape. "That's..." she paused a moment, then looked up at him. "Did anybody ever tell you about how Mom was, back when the Raiders came?"

"They didn't tell me about it, and to be honest, I really don't think I want to remember," Ked admitted. "It was a very painful time for all of us."

"Uncle Bato once got in a screaming match with Dad, about that. How they had 'sullied her' and 'made her unclean'. How she got all weird for a while," Benell sat close to her brother. "I can't say for sure, but I think _I_ was why she got better."

"Isn't that egocentric of you?" Ked asked with a smirk.

"Don't be like that, you know what I meant," Benell said, slugging his arm. He hissed in discomfort when she struck the still-raw skin on his shoulders. "She had something bad happen to her, but something good came as a result. I don't think your woman in there has had something good happen to her yet."

"She's not my woman," Ked said quietly.

"Please. Even _I_ know you're desperately in love with her," she laughed. Then, she trailed off. "Oh... you haven't told her, have you? Tui La, Ked, I thought you were better than that."

"It was like Dad always said," Ked whispered. "The instant I saw her, I knew. But she was catatonic, so there was always the voice in the back of my head, rationalizing. This wasn't right. This was taking advantage of her. As the years went on, the voice started moving in other directions. This is just infatuation. When she wakes up, you'll probably despise her. But I didn't. Gods, this just isn't fair."

"Love seldom is, Bear," she said.

"And even now, I know I can't tell her. Before, it was because she and I were in two different worlds. She's royalty, and let's face it, no matter what _your_ paternity, I'm a peasant," Benell rolled her eyes at that. It was a frequent caprice of their youth to wonder who Benell's father was, besides a Raider and a rapist. It was also a fantasy long ago decided irrelevant. "But now, I think it's worse than that. I think that even if I told her, she wouldn't believe it, because she doesn't think there is such a creature as somebody capable of loving her."

Benell thought for a moment. "Maybe she'd believe it if somebody showed it to her?"

Ked laughed at that. "If only it were that easy."

"Sometimes love _is_ easy."

"_Would y'all mind shutting the hell up? I'm trying to sleep,_" Smellerbee muttered, somewhat drunkenly, from the corner opposite where his parents were sleeping. She turned back over and dragged a mound of blankets over her. Ked nodded to the balcony, which was just about the only place where they could talk in peace.

The wind was cold against his skin, hearkening back to the days of his childhood when the whole world was essentially a dozen square leagues of ice and freezing water. It actively stung at the new skin on his shoulders; usually, healing repaired skin perfectly, but if one accelerated the process, there would always be mistakes, and scar tissue. Of course, that was the way with many things. Ked smiled down over the city. Despite everything, despite the outsiders and the earthbenders and even the few Fire Nationals who now called this place their own, it was still his home. In its heart, it was still South Water Tribe. Changing, flowing, adapting despite every disadvantage. "It's been so long since I was home," Ked said. "I practically forgot what it felt like to be cold."

"Not surprising," Benell said. "Last time I visited, I thought the heat was going to kill me."

"You don't like visiting, do you?"

"I am Water Tribe," Benell said simply, which ought seem absurd coming from somebody of her coloration. "And since you are too, you should stop moping. Tribesmen don't mope."

"I'll mope if I please," Ked said smoothly. "I've earned that right. So. Not only are you now taller than me, you're an even stronger waterbender. Anything else that's changed since the last visit? Any boyfriends I need to put the fear of the Gods into?"

"Oh, I am _never_ going to introduce you to my boyfriends," she said with rolling eyes.

Ked turned abruptly from the rail. His hands tightened into fists. "Boyfriend_**s**_? Plural? Oh, there will be _much_ beating of ass!"

"I was joking, I was joking," Benell said around laughter.

"Pity I wasn't," a new voice came from the corner, where the stairs led down in the circuit of the building. Ked turned and saw a particular face, a particular set of blue eyes, that made his blood freeze. Of course, that was about a fraction of a second before that individual did so literally. Tearing pain shot through Ked's body and he barely got out a scream of pain and shock before he was forced to his knees by the blood in his veins, and then his head smashed down into the stone balcony. Katara glared murder at him.

"Master Katara, what are you doing?" Benell screamed.

"Ked is a traitor who is harboring the most dangerous woman on this Earth," Katara said coldly. Come on, Ked thought. I've been in worse situations. She's controlling my water. So if I...

"Who? Smellerbee? She's harmless! Well, a bit of a drunk but harmless!"

Katara's eyes widened a bit, a note of confusion on her face. "_She's_ here?" she asked. Ked took advantage of that moment of vulnerability to twist that sensation he felt in his veins, snapping the grasp of Katara over his body. It was like he began bloodbending _himself_, as odd a notion as that seemed. The pain and tension vanished, and he quickly pushed himself back up to his feet. Katara looked furious. "How did you do that?"

"Trade secret," Ked said, lowering himself into a waterbending form. Katara's eyes narrowed.

"Do you really want to do this? Fight a waterbending duel against the most powerful waterbender in about a thousand years?"

"Who said anything about using water?" Ked said, pulling the knife from his belt.

"Master! Bear! Stop this!" Benell entreated, stepping between them.

"Get out of the way, girl," Katara snapped.

"Do as she says, I don't want you getting hurt," Ked agreed.

"No! I will not have this!" Benell then dropped into a low stance of her own, albeit one much more refined and elegant than Ked's own, as much as the South Water Style could be said to be elegant. Katara faltered at that.

"What the hell is going on out here?" Ogan bellowed, stepping out of his house sans shirt. Sedna, willowy and tall, looked out over his head. Skidding past both was Bi, who despite being at least half drunk, was fully dressed and wielding a pair of machetes. Of course she'd prepared fast. Child soldier.

"_Well, throw me off a cliff and call me an airbender,_" Bi said with a sour smirk. "_If it isn't Jet's __favorite Tribesman._"

"What are you doing here, little girl?" Ogan said sternly. He had a voice which brooked no quarrel. Where Sedna was the velvet glove of the house, her fingers in everything, Ogan was the iron fist, seldom seen but never disobeyed. Katara gathered herself again.

"Ked is responsible for the escape of a dangerous fugitive named Azula, and has to pay for his part in this war."

"It's not my war," Ogan said. "And Azula has been nothing but a perfect guest. A bit moody, but I will not cast her out of my house and into imprisonment. What has she ever done to the Water Tribes?"

"She killed the Avatar! Wait. Did you say...?"

"Aang? Isn't he, like, still alive?" Benell asked.

"_Boy, you people do talk funny,_" Bi muttered, not dropping out of her fighting stance. Ked shot her a glare, and then turned back to his once-waterbending teacher.

"She also tried to kill me, and my brother. She's insane and dangerous and cannot be let loose in the world," Katara finished, distracted.

"Whatever problems you have with the girl are your problems, not mine," Ogan said. "If you want her, then you're going to have to march Hakoda to my doorstep and have him demand her. She is under my roof as my guest and that means she has my protection. It might not be much, since I'm just a hunter and you're some waterbending prodigy, but I swear by Tenger Etseg's sword, I will fight to protect what is mine."

"Azula's _here_?" Katara shouted. She took one step forward, but then she widened her gaze, and began to take in what was happening around her. The commotion had begun to draw people out of their homes, up and down the building. They had surrounded the confrontation, with curious questions being asked of those involved. When it became known that it was Benell against Katara, essentially, the group polarized, and very, very quickly.

"This isn't your place, Katara," Gunna said, shaking her head slowly.

"Your father might be High Chief, but that does not make you princess," her teenaged son agreed. He took up a waterbending pose of his own. Angry murmurs began to spread through the crowd.

"What is wrong with you people? This is _Azula_ we're talking about! She's the daughter of Fire Lord Ozai! Granddaughter of the man who almost destroyed the South Water Tribe forever!" Katara said.

"Daughter, granddaughter, yes," Ogan said. "But not they themselves."

"You're going to let the granddaughter of the man who sanctioned what happened to you, and my own mother, just walk away unpunished!"

Sedna's face took on an uncharacteristic fierceness. "Do not speak about that day, child. You have no right."

"I lost my mother that day," Katara answered.

"And Gunna lost a son," Sedna said. She pointed herself. "And my brother Bato lost _everything_! We had to stake him to the ground for a week so he didn't run off after the Raiders, blood drunk and mad, and get himself killed. So don't dare claim you hold a monopoly on pain. We've all suffered, yes. But some of us learned to put it behind us."

Shame crept onto the prodigy's face, and she lowered her hands. The angry murmurs shifted to something more benign, and Benell quickly moved to Katara and gave her a brief hug. After they parted, she smiled. "I know you feel strongly about this. But we have everything under control. Azula has had a very hard night. Perhaps you can speak to her in the morning, when everybody has a cool head?"

Smellerbee looked around at all of the people dispersing around her. "_What, so we're not fighting, then?_" she asked.

"Maybe that's for the best," Katara agreed. "Thank you for being the voice of reason. Without my husband around, I sometimes get..."

"Carried away," Benell agreed. Katara turned a cold glare at Ked.

"But don't assume this is over, Ked. Azula is more dangerous than you could ever know. She can control you without your even realizing it. She is cold and calculating and manipulative. Azula always lies, never cares about anything but herself. When she's done with you, she'll abandon you like you were nothing."

"Ah, I get it, so you don't know anything about her at all," Ked said. With a frown, he turned to his parents. "You didn't need to do that, Mom."

Sedna's glare turned soft again. "Sometimes, a child needs to have some perspective shown to her. It's not her fault she was caught up in the moment."

No doubt fuming, Katara turned and went down the stairwell that looped down the balcony to the ground. They had earned one night of rest. What they would do next was in the hands of the gods, because Ked didn't have the first clue.

"_All that excitement and nothing happens? What a rip-off,_" Bi muttered while getting back into her bed. "_And now I'm cold, too!_"

Were Ked any but a Tribesman, he would have thanked his family for sticking up for him. As a Tribesman, though, he didn't need to. Because he never doubted for an instant that they would. That was how Tribesmen were. "Would you mind sleeping out here tonight?" Ked asked. "I don't think we should disturb our guest."

"It wouldn't bother me at all," she said. "Good night, Bear."

"Good night, Benell."

Ked opened the door, but was a bit surprised when cold air swept out of the room at foot level. The windows, built to be able to seal very tightly, would hold in the heat like a cork holding in wine. But they only worked if they were closed. The window at the far end of the room was wide open. The bed where Azula had been laid out was empty, and the clothing she had worn earlier today was missing as well, right down to the boots. Ked's eyes went just as wide as that window, and he raced to it, leaning through and looking down. It was only two paces drop to the balcony underneath. He thought back, and realized that at some point during that stand-off, he'd stopped being able to feel her in his mind's eye. His connection to her was fading, granted, but he couldn't remember when he'd sensed her last.

Which meant he had no idea where she'd gone. The door opened again behind him, spilling a bit more light into the cold room. Benell was standing there, about to ask him something, when she saw the same thing he had, and jumped to the same conclusions. "I...I'm so sorry, Ked," she said.

"She could be anywhere," Ked said, clutching at his head, sliding back down the wall. "Gods, why can't I do anything right?"

* * *

Hatsou loved her job. She had been doing it for as long as she was alive. It wasn't a glorious profession, not by any means; in fact, it was accounted one of the lower. But still, there was a joy to it that she could neither explain nor better. Her body was in good shape for her age, but she was getting up there in her years, so hauling the radish cart was becoming something that she was going to have to seek help with. Perhaps hire a dragon horse?

She was singing merrily to herself about the joys of radish farming and sales, when she heard a rumbling sound ahead, the sounds of shouting, the smell of burning pitch. She dropped the yoke of the cart, letting it sit as it would, and spryly clambered up a hill that overlooked her destination, the border town of Fu. Say what you would about Ember, you could always sell their radishes in Sozu territory for more money. It made the trip between Fire Fountain City and Fu very profitable for her. So when she looked down and beheld an army in electric blue armor, advancing under flying balls of fire, the first thought she had was 'how am I going to sell my radishes to a burnt out husk of a city?'.

Hatsou hadn't given much thought to the politics of the Fire Nation. There wasn't much need for her to. But now, since they'd finally touched her business and her life, she wished that she had. The Blue Flame had attacked the Red, and the war between the two sides had begun in force. She stared for a long time at the battle unfolding before her. She didn't know exactly what was going on; no military mind was she. Only radishes. She turned when she heard a crunching sound from behind her. A troop of blue-armored rhino riders stormed up the dirt path, sweeping down the side of the battle, rounding Hatsou on her hill without so much as a second glance. But Hatsou did give a second glance, at the path she had abandoned.

Her eyes wide and filling with tears, she ran down to the road. She fell to her knees, her hands reaching down and touching the splintered wood and crushed produce. She raised her fists to the sky and let out a cry which would be heard from Fu to Grand Ember, a banshee wail.

"**MY RADISHES!**"

* * *

_Yeah... that didn't go so well for her did it? Leave a review._

**I just realized I embedded a Shout Out early in Chapter 7 without realizing it. Fitting, considering where the story takes Azula in the next couple of chapters, but still, a bit weird to look back and realize what I'd done. No reason not to run with it, though. I worked it in more completely into the Hatred Arc finale.**

**The last scene between Azula and Ked was the reason why I wanted to do this book. It was the first scene of the entire War of Flames that I had plotted, much like the Zuko/Mai-under-a-rock from Book 2 was the reason I created Children of the War. And yes, before you mention it, Azula is in fact profoundly unwell. And now, since she's operating on a poisoned sort of logic that doesn't conform to normal rules, she's actually worse. Nothing got jostled free, because she put way too much effort into**

**Nevermind.**

**Nothing to see here.**


	10. The Runaway

**A brief look at Great Whales, where Hatred Arc takes place. The next, Hope Arc, is mostly Azuli, for comparison. I saw a long chain of islands on the world map which wouldn't fly the colors of any culture, and decided to go off on a little tangent with them. A Welsh/Hebrew angle with weird religion, familiar-ish names, and destruction of enormous amounts of land quite by accident. Also in this arc, we actually see the Avatar again. Yay.**

**And now for the inevitable A to the Q in the Review box. Dragon Wings are actually what an idiot in the Fire Nation gets. Mostly because it is a roughly symetrical burn from both sides, indicating that one is the type to bite off far more than one can chew in a fight and get ganged up on by two or more firebenders. Of course, Azula's mindset begin what it is, she sees this as a positive. She fights two fingered because she does. It's just how she does it. She thinks it gives her precision, a placebo effect. And Sokka quickly becomes aware of the Gaang's shortcomings of late with communication. That is part of the brilliance of the fake Azula. If Zuko denounces her, she only has to say two words. "Prove it." It is a matter of one's word over another, and in Ember, they'll believe her over Zuko.**

**Oddly, one of you managed to guess the reason for Azula's breakdown exactly. She's not exactly operating on flawless logic at the moment, you must understand. She's teetering on the ragged edge, and thus, not amenable to coherent, reality-based thought at the moment. For Time Frame: Sokka was only reunited with Ty Lee on the day Azula woke up in the South Pole. And since he has means of communication which put Hawky to shame for speed (even if they do run the risk of face-stealage), he is actually better on the ball than most. He knows where to look. And as for why he didn't inform anybody... well, he promised his wife.**

* * *

The cold wind shrieked along the south polar waters, cold and wet and spraying desiccating foam with every wave. The fuel for this ship had run out long ago, so limping to shore was more a matter of personal sacrifice than anything else. It wasn't until she was sure to within a hair of her life that the water wasn't above her neck that she finally abandoned the ship, not even bothering to drop anchor. It wasn't her ship; she'd stolen it days ago, set a course north, and just waited, powering against the waves despite weather and lack of sleep.

She landed with a splash, the cold cutting her to the bone, soaking her thick clothing in an instant and becoming brutally heavy. She slogged out of that foam and surf, the waves trying their best to upend her. But what she lacked in lifetime swimming experience, she more than made up for in resolve not to lose her footing. The eighth of a mile it took to reach the shore, with its dull yellow sand so much unlike her home, was one of the most arduous marathons she ever undertook. When she finally reached the drier sand above the waves, she flopped out onto her back, breathing deeply, golden eyes staring up into an overcast, lonely sky.

She hadn't intended to stay there for more than a moment, but moments turned into minutes. They almost turned into an hour, with that cold penetrating her flesh and numbing her. It would be so easy to just stop. Just give up. To not care anymore. Everybody had cast her aside. She was worthless. With that, came hopelessness, if it wasn't already implanted there long ago by a subtle hand. As it stood, the only kindness she could do anybody on this Earth was to crawl into a cave somewhere and die.

Azula was not having a good day.

She tried to call up that fire which would lick at her soul at all hours of every day, but she found herself... distracted. Drained. Exhausted. Three guesses, the first two don't count. She frowned at herself. Since when was she given to sarcasm? With a grunt of angry effort, she heaved herself to a sit, and from there, to a hobbled stand. With short steps, pushing the sand away more than striding, she followed the river which fought valiantly to press against the sea, only to be swallowed whole and unmade. She didn't have one sweet clue where she was heading. And she didn't care, because it didn't matter.

Every stitch of her fur-lined and thick clothing sloshed to her ears with every step, just another distraction in a plethora. She thought she could seduce the Tribesman, to keep some control of the situation, but he had rejected her. She'd given him everything she had left to her and he said no. She wasn't good enough for _him_, even. They were right. All of them. Azula was worthless. For some reason, thinking about that brought a sob to her throat, which she didn't even bother to repress. Luckily, the sobbing died quickly, and didn't slow her down much. Not that speed mattered.

"So you were right," she said aloud, her voice croaking. "You were right all along. They had no need for me. They had no use for me, so they threw me away like the garbage that I am. Are you happy? Did you win a bet? Come on, I know you're just waiting to rub it in," Azula swung her arms out, spinning in a circle, trying to see where that disheveled doppelganger had hidden herself. How much did Azula look like that figment, she wondered? "Don't leave me waiting! Heap it on! Tell me what you _really_ think of me!"

The wind answered her. Silence answered her.

She kept walking, not even bothering to wipe what tears had fallen from her cheeks. She was so cold. She was cold and alone and she didn't want to keep fighting anymore. All she had ever done in her life was fight. Fight against Mother's expectations; Mama had wanted a courtier, a diplomat and ambassador, where Azula had always cleaved to the blade and the flame. Fight against _Father's_ enemies; how much time and effort had she spent trying to thwart her brother, and the Avatar, only to see them defeat her so completely? Fight against herself...

It dawned on Azula that she hadn't the first, foggiest idea who she was. Yes, she was a firebender, but so were thousands upon thousands of others. She was a soldier, but so also were millions. She was royalty, but even the foul-mouthed prisoner could claim that identity. What made Azula Azula? What was she that nobody else was? No answer came to her. How could it? She was utterly replaceable, utterly unworthy, and utterly forgettable. History would lose her name without a second glance, and be the better for it.

Because even though it was not a lonely sorority, one thing Azula knew was that she was a monster.

The long bleak of her walk up the river did some good to dry her clothing, but nothing to dry her eyes nor soothe her soul. The river hit a bit of a bump when a tall waterfall rose up into a thoroughly hilly bit, splashing down into a small lake before continuing toward the ocean she had left behind. Not having any destination in mind, she slumped down at the shores of that lake, looking down in the clear waters. The ripples precluded any use as a mirror, and it was very cold under her fingertips. The water tasted sweet, doubly so because she was fairly sure she was dehydrated. But as she drank, the roaring of the falling water sounded derisive laughter to her ears. She kept walking, until she found a spot, hollowed out behind the flow of water. Part of it angled up from the lake, a relatively dry spot. She sat on that place, still, the drone of the water constant, her only remaining companion in the entire world. She tucked her knees close to her chest, trying to keep some of the warmth in her.

Her eyes pressed closed, but that pounding headache she felt kept pressing at her. She started rocking on her seat, and again, tears and sobs began to flow. Here, out of sight, away from every person in the world who hated and despised and didn't want her, Azula, twenty three years old in body but a child in spirit, cried openly and desperately. She wanted to stop so badly that it hurt, but she could as easily bent water. Nobody was coming to help her. Nobody would want to.

* * *

**Chapter 10: The Runaway**

* * *

Zuko was pacing again, as he often did these days. And this wouldn't even be the tenth time she'd have to tell him to stop. But this time, she knew doing so wouldn't do him much good, because he had it in his fool head that this was his responsibility. There was much Mai loved about the Fire Lord, his gentleness, his sincerity, his kindness, his respect, but there was just as much about him that drove the Azuli woman up the wall. Like his presumption that everything that went wrong under his reign was his fault.

"If you're not going to stop that, you might as well walk somewhere useful," Mai said, letting the rocking bed slow, Rukio sleeping peacefully inside it. Unlike his two older sisters, who'd been absolute terrors until they learned how to speak, Rukio was sedate and easy. Perhaps he was trying to make up for the circumstances of his birth. Of course, that was a foolish notion. He was a baby. Babies didn't take responsibility for anything.

Besides, that was Zuko's job, apparently. Mai got up and joined her husband, the shadow to his flame. The instant they passed the threshold of the room, the nurses leapt into action, sweeping into the room behind them and practically barricading themselves inside. Zuko hadn't complained for an instant when Mai enlisted Azuli to take care of the children; anybody attempting harm to Rukio would need to wade through a forest of knives to do it. "We've lost everything from Fu to Glowing River," Zuko said, his jaw tight and his good eye taking up much of the same perpetual scowl of his burnt one. "That's our breadbasket in one stroke."

"We'll survive. We have land reclaimed from Hui in the north," Mai said. She paused, turning to a servant walking behind them. She fixed the mop-bearing man with a glare, letting a blade slip down between her fingers. She knew the faces of every person who worked in this palace. His was not one of them. The man blanched and turned off the first opportunity he got. "Have somebody arrest that man," she said idly.

Zuko nodded, but then frowned, scratching at his beard. "One thing I don't understand is why troops moved west into Azul? My sister knows better than that."

"It's the oldest rule in the book," Mai agreed. "Never fight a land war against the Azuli."

"Azula doesn't make those kinds of mistakes," Zuko said.

"So maybe there's a chance Azula isn't in charge." Mai said.

"Azula? Not in charge? You do _remember_ my sister, don't you?" Zuko said with a sour laugh.

"I also notice when things aren't right," Mai pointed out coolly. "Or did you forget about that spy just a minute ago?"

Zuko came up short, an expression of pain plain on his face. "She was right there. Standing right in front of me, and I couldn't say a word."

"You had a concussion," Mai pointed out.

"She saved my children. I didn't think..."

"You were whining for five years that you wanted your little sister back, and as soon as you got what you wanted, you freak out and assume she's trying to kill you. And when the evidence comes in that she might not be the monster you assume, it confuses you. Ozai _really_ did a number on you, my husband," Mai rolled her eyes.

"You always did have a way of making me seem like an idiot," Zuko said, voice sotto.

"I'm a people person," Mai said flatly. Her husband actually chuckled at that. It brought a smile to her face, however briefly.

That smile slipped away, though, when they exited the homely, comfortable sections of the palace and found Hotama Azdi waiting in the room usually filled with courtiers. The late hour meant that it ought be cleared, but Azuli had a clear voice in the current court, and ways of making themselves known. Mai raised one slim brow at her countryman. "Inspector Azdi. You look... like somebody tried to kill you."

It was true. Azdi's arm was in a sling, and more reddened bandages were wound about his head. He a shrug, his split and bloody lips pulling into a smirk which had to be at least a little painful. "It takes a lot to kill a son of Azul. I bring bad news. The ambassador of the ruling house was waylaid by the Blue Flame and destroyed. I and a few others barely escaped with our lives."

"I guess that makes you the ad hoc ambassador to the Fire Lord," Mai said. Zuko glanced between them. "What news from Azul?"

"Siege and occupation. Well," he laughed, "_attempted_ occupation. You know how well Azuli take such an affront."

"That has me confused," Zuko said. "My sister is at the head of those armies, and she invades Azul. She knows what they say about her namesake, the way they fight. So what would possess her to engage in that sort of suicide mission?"

"I cannot say," Azdi said. "But I do have information that she is not working alone in her invasion. You recall the massive damage during the attempt on your lives a fortnight ago?" both royals nodded. "That was obviously the work of earthbenders, so I ran out a few feelers. Turns out, there have been sightings of former members of the Dai Li among Azula's camp. This either means she somehow regained the loyalty and service of the Dai Li, or..."

"Or there is a foreign hand at play, trying to keep itself hidden," Mai said, cutting off Zuko. Still, he looked pensive rather than annoyed at her deduction. Azdi looked between the two of them, a hint of confusion on his face. Of course he would. Mai had unintentionally found herself the most powerful Fire Lady of recent history, which suited her fine if it meant she could work to protect that which she cared about.

"If there is foreign interference in this war, then we are potentially in much greater danger than I had feared," Azdi said. "A civil war is one thing. A civil war with one side funded by outsiders is quite another."

"Whatever the case, we shouldn't stand around here talking about it in the hallways," Zuko said. "We will..."

"You haven't slept in two days," Mai said. "Go to bed. I'll deal with Adzi."

"But..."

"Zuko," Mai said evenly, giving him a hard look with her bright grey eyes. Zuko sighed, and nodded, giving her hand a brief squeeze. He turned and went back into the residential areas of the palace. When the servants closed the doors behind him, Mai turned back to her countryman. "Alright. My husband is somewhat delicate as to certain topics, and you obviously have something to say that he wouldn't like to hear. So you will tell _me_."

Azdi gave her an appraising look, then sighed. With a wince, he shifted his shoulder in its sling, before leaning close. "There is another thing I have heard, rumors only, but from so many independent sources that there must be some truth to them."

"What is this rumor, Azdi?"

"They speak of a counterfeit. A false-Azula, a figurehead," Azdi said. He glanced furtively around for a moment, then leaned closer. "They speak of carnage on the island of Betla, and Azula's murder. If the rumors I have heard are correct, then Azula is already dead."

* * *

Ked was not a devotee of spirits in either sense of the word. While he, as any devout man would, acknowledged that the spirits had a place in the world and beyond, he could not interact with them in any meaningful way, so they simply didn't enter into his life. Also, considering he worked a job where temperance was the order of the day, he hadn't acquired a taste for alcohol outside of very few occasions, and those few were alone and away from the public eye. It wasn't that he railed against the evils of liquor, but he just didn't feel like getting besotted in front of others.

That, and the general bad mood Ked was in, made this tavern the last place he wanted to be.

"Alright, booze!" Bi said, brightening as she forced her way in behind him. "I've always wanted a day in a Whalesh winery."

"Not now," Ked snapped. She glared at him, but rolled her eyes and leaned next to the door. He was going to catch hell, but he didn't care. Days, and no sign of her. She'd left in the middle of the night, and he not long after, but she could have been heading anywhere, and nobody could track a ship across the ocean. In truth, he was surprised as hell that Smellerbee decided to come along. As much as he appreciated her aid, he couldn't have predicted her staying with him. He just figured she'd use the opportunity to engage in some hedonistic debauchery in the South for a while before moving on. If he'd give some time to think about it, he probably would have figured out why, but right now, he had something of a one-track mind.

Ked was in a condition he seldom was before; unshaven. Smelling of salt, his wrists chafed from the sea air, his face betraying days without a razor, he leaned against the bar, his dark blue eyes staring at the also blue eyed barkeep. Nobody would mistake the other man for a Tribesman, though, since his skin was so fair as to be almost translucent. "I'm looking for somebody," Ked said in fluent Whalesh. It was a linguistic choice that most at the Fire Academy thought daft and fanciful, but how well it served him now. "Black hair. Gold eyes, very pale. Wearing Tribal clothing. Have you seen anybody pass through here?"

"I don't see much," the barkeep said, his eyes going back down to his work. "You'd have to talk to the owner. He's sitting yonder, by the kitchen."

Ked nodded toward the man, and Smellerbee quietly took a new position, watching the overweight proprietor and all happening around him. Ked brusquely pulled out a chair and seated himself next to the fat man. His grey eyes turned to Ked with a derisive look. "I don't think you're supposed to be in that seat, barbarian," the man said.

"I hear you're the person to talk to about strangers passing through," Ked asked.

"You have no manners."

"At the moment, no I don't," Ked said, his jaw tightening. "There is a woman out there, sick and alone, maybe even starving, and I intend to find her before it's too late. Are you going to help me or get in the way?"

The man smirked. "That depends."

"On?"

"What you bring to the table," he leaned back, his belly pressing outward on his pants like a lizard trying to burst out its egg. The button strained against its seams desperately trying not to fly off and hit some random passer by in the eye. "I hear a lot of stories. Tell me the kind you're looking for, and I might be able to concoct one which meets your fancy."

"I'm not interested in stories. I'm interested in sightings," Ked said.

"And you still haven't told me what you were offering in return?"

"Payment?" Ked asked. "You're going to put a price on a woman's life?"

"Everything has its price, barbarian," the man said with a laugh. Ked's jaw grew tight.

"How about this. Medical advice. Lose some damned weight or your heart will explode in your chest within the next five years," Ked leaned a bit closer and sniffed. "And you should lay off the sweet foods, because your body can't process them properly. I can smell it in your sweat. I wager you'll go blind, maybe even lose your feet to gangrene in three, four years at this rate. You are a profoundly unhealthy man."

"Is that a threat?" the owner asked, leaning forward to the groaning protestations of the table he was leaning on. It was at this point that Ked lost his already frayed temper.

With a lightning fast motion, Ked drew out and slammed down his knife, right between two of the fingers that the man had splayed across the tabletop. He glanced down, then back up at Ked. "Not one word. I am in a very bad mood. You wondered if that was a threat? No, but this is. I am going to find her. You are going to help me, one way or another. Is that clear?"

The man sat back. "I can have you thrown in prison for this," he said quietly. Ked glared back, and he reclined, uncomfortably. "But that holds no terror for you, I can tell. Fine. Who is it that you're looking for?"

"A National woman, golden eyed, wearing Tribal clothing," Ked said. "She would have passed through here not long ago."

"She seems to be a popular figure," the owner said. "You're not the first person on Gwynt to be asking after her, although the Tribal clothes is a new one for me."

"And what did you tell him?"

"The same thing I'm telling you. She went through town days ago. Didn't talk to anybody. Meek girl. I guessed she was running away from home," he said.

"That doesn't sound like her."

"Then maybe you've got the wrong girl in mind. That's the one I saw. Now I'm going to kindly ask you to leave my place of business. I have enough trouble with your kind playing games with my drinks. I don't feel like having to refinish any more tabletops because of you."

"I'm not done."

"Well, I am," he said, getting to his feet. With a mocking tone, he said, "and best of luck finding your little girlfriend. I don't doubt she ran off to avoid this sort of treatment at home. Goddamned barbarians, you wouldn't know proper behavior if it slapped you in the face."

Ked shot to his feet, but he found somebody dragging him back. A fierce glare took in Smellerbee, who was pulling him back. Her eyes were almost as fierce as his, but they also had an oddly yellow tinge to them. "Calm the hell down, Ked. You're going to get us killed."

Ked turned back to the owner, who was walking away, to the protestation of the floor under him, and growled. It was true. He was letting his temper out, and it was promptly running roughshod over his better judgment. But this was Azula. Better judgment took a flying leap out the window when she was involved.

"Fine," Ked said, but didn't feel it. The last few days had sort of blurred together, just constantly walking, sailing, searching, hoping. The last really clear thing he could recall was that early morning, when they were scrambling to get ready to chase after Azula. Without any of the coal-powered boats left in the harbor after Azula took hers, they'd had to 'settle' for one of the South's new fast cutters. It was a sleek, attractive ship, almost seamless plates of silvery metal stretching front to back, under brilliant white sails. It was quite unlike the rag-tag ships that the South had been sailing in during the Weary War, after being reduced to almost nothing but fighting on anyway. This was the Tribe as it was meant to be.

Pakku had greeted them at the docks in his usual, cold manner. Ked had expected some diatribe about running away from justice or his responsibilities. Hell, he had even wondered if the old master was going to haul Ked back to the Palace inside a block of ice. But instead, the old man took Ked aside.

"There are things you aren't privy to, child. Important things which are being rocked to their fundament," Ked raised a protestation, but Pakku waved it down. "It is not your fault that such things have happened. You are an unwitting 'soldier' in all of these events. But even the lowliest 'soldier' piece can, through good strategy and foresight, ascend to become a mighty 'paragon'."

"What are you talking about? This is a woman's life, not a Pai Sho game!"

"You had better learn to listen when your elders are trying to tell you something," Pakku said with annoyance. "You might learn something. Pai Sho is not just a game. It is a microcosm for the world we live in. For a long time, the board was controlled by one set of hands and resisted by one other. Now, there are many players arrayed around the board, all holding their territories and trying to find their place. Are you going to be moved about at the whims of the mighty, Ked, or are you going to demand your own place at the board?"

Ked took a calming breath. It would be a short while until that ship would sail, anyway. "What are you trying to tell me, Master Pakku?"

"Ordinarily, there is a process to be followed, but I sense we have little time. I have been keeping my eye on you for quite a few years, Ked. I think you are ready to learn a few important things about the world you live in," Pakku said.

And those things were stranger than Ked had thought possible. Something hadn't quite landed right during his conversation with the owner, so Ked turned. "One more thing," he said to the corpulent Whaleshman. The owner turned back with a look of disdain. "You said I wasn't the first looking for that woman. Who else was?"

"You can ask him yourself. He's bedded down in the barn with the eel horses," the man said, before turning away for good. Ked gave a glance to Smellerbee, and the two walked out.

"I'm surprised you can speak Whalesh," Ked said, bracing himself against that driving wind that tried to knock him a step sideways as soon as he cleared the door to the tavern. "It's not the kind of language most bother picking up!"

"Royalty, remember!" Bi shouted against the wind, also holding at her coat. She had to walk at something of an angle to check herself against the gale. "I've been trilingual since I could walk!"

"Who do you think it was, talking about Azula?"

"It could be anybody!" Bi answered. Mercifully, the barn wasn't too far away. Ked slid the door open just enough for both to get through, before closing it behind him. He could hear the hissing sounds the eel horses gave as they registered a newcomer. It was no great surprise they looked like eel hounds. In fact, the two were just two breeds of the same species. One thing was very out of place in the barn, though. A loud, low groaning sound rumbled through, silencing all the hisses. Ked squinted and could barely make out a white, fuzzy form contently eating hay at the back of the barn.

"Anybody with a sky bison," Ked amended. He gave a glance to the fighter beside him. "You don't think... It couldn't be..."

Ked turned back, and he beheld a woman hanging upside down from a beam by her bare feet, a wide grin on her face. He let out a clipped shout of alarm, and she gently drifted back down the the floor. She was clad in bright yellows, and he could see blue arrow tattoos on her hands and bare feet. His shock dissipated, he let out a sigh of relief. "I can't say I saw her coming," Smellerbee pointed out.

"You are not the Avatar, woman," Ked said. She grinned her way over.

"Of course not. His actor was a woman, though," her voice was very bright.

"Wait a minute... Missus Baihu?" Ked asked, recognition dawning. She grinned brighter.

"Doctor Ked!" Ty Lee shouted, giving him a very tight and rib-creaking hug. After she was done, she turned to the former royal standing next to him. "And I don't know who you are but I don't care!" and she gave Smellerbee a similar hug. Bi protested, struggling to get free, but Ty Lee's embraces were much like Waterbending lessons from Pakku. You didn't get out until they were done with you. "Did you find her? Is she alright? I heard she was hurt was that true? Did you really kidnap her? Wait, why isn't she here?"

"I... ah..." Ked stammered, not sure which question to answer first.

"She's got a hell of a mouth on her," Bi pointed out.

"Tell me about it," another voice answered. There was a creaking sound, followed by the sound of somebody landing in straw. Ked turned to see Sokka rising to his feet, staring daggers at Ked. "So tell me. Why is it that I hear word that Azula's wandering Great Whales alone?"

* * *

The Isle of Gwynt was the literal ass-end of the nation of Great Whales. It was right there in the name. However much it was an island, it was not small, however, so that Azula was on the same island was about as significant as saying that the Earth King and a beggar were both in Ba Sing Se. None of this was heavy on the mind of Azula at that moment, however; she had other burdens pressing down on her. Crushing her. The wind had carried in rain, which would soon sweep east, freezing and penetrating. Even her clothing offered her little resistance. Not that she cared if she resisted.

The drowned mud-soup that these people called a road opened out of overgrown brush and needly pine trees, into a hamlet, lines of hardy, cold-weather grapes stretching across the hillsides. The buildings were all tucked low into the depression between those hills. She had no better destination. So she walked, the frigid water stinging with every droplet that struck her face. She didn't really register much as she walked through that town. Thatch roofs and an utter lack of glass windows marked it as the poorest of the poor. She walked, her stomach screaming in her ears, pain radiating out from her guts. How long had it been since she'd eaten? Not since the South Pole, not in any sufficient quantity.

She walked, and despite herself, found herself looking at those buildings, all doors closed and windows shuttered. She knew, that by her station, the only thing she should feel for those commoners was pity, if even that. But instead, she felt something else burning at her, beside that hunger. Envy. Cold, sad, and anemic envy, which she couldn't fully explain even to herself. One building didn't have a bolted door, and in fact, it stood open to a fairly well lit room. Azula found herself staring in, at the rough, wooden furniture. Even with her face essentially numbed and her nose running in a shameful fashion, she could still smell food inside. A part of her wanted to march in there and demand it. A part that was growing weaker with every moment, a part starving as she starved, gave up as she was giving up.

Somebody leaned out the door, a mere shadow against the light beyond, and shouted something at Azula. Her Whalesh, which was fractional at best, only picked up a few words. Her eyes went down, and she turned to keep moving. The woman took a step out into the rain and caught Azula's arm.

"Let me go!" Azula shouted, pulling away.

"You should come inside," the woman said against the driving rain, in heavily accented Huojian. "You'll catch your death out here in this weather."

Azula looked up the road, then back at the door. Removing the choice, Azula found her hand grasped again, and was dragged into the public house. With the door open, it wasn't much warmer than the storm outside, but it was mercifully dry. And still, she felt numb, not just in her flesh, but in her soul. The woman, dark haired and eyed, but covered in dark freckles, sat Azula down at a table next to the fire, yammering on in Whalesh which Azula couldn't more than half follow. Finally, the woman stopped.

"You don't speak Whalesh, do you?" she asked. Azula just looked at the woman. She was middle aged, her face lined and her dark hair greying. Azula looked down at her hands again. They were so pale they almost looked cadaverous.

"I shouldn't be here," Azula said quietly.

"Where are you from?" the woman asked, sitting down across the table.

"It doesn't matter."

"That bad, huh?" she sighed. "I understand how sometimes you feel the need to run away. How things can become overwhelming. So what did he do? Did he hit you?"

"He... rejected me," Azula said quietly. "Nobody rejects me. Everybody rejects me."

The woman stared at her, thinking, trying to make sense of what Azula said. In truth, even Azula herself wasn't sure what that meant. "Just sit here for a bit. I'll get you something to eat. You look," she paused, as Azula's stomach growled so loud it was undoubted that most of the small handful of other patrons of the public house also heard it, "and sound like you haven't eaten in days."

"I don't have any money," Azula said. The woman shook her head with a kindly smile.

"That doesn't matter much. You should always help the less fortunate."

"I don't deserve help," Azula said, her head lowering. She would not cry. She would not cry! Her internal admonishments were unnecessary, because she, despite being soaked to the bone, seemed to have run out of tears. At least, for the moment. The next moment might be a whole different story.

"Everybody deserves help," the woman said.

"Everybody but Azula," she corrected morosely. But she was not overheard, as the Whaleshwoman had turned and began shouting into a back room something. Azula just stared at her hands. Those hands had created nothing in her entire life except for fear and hatred. It had been a cruel justice when they had been cut off. Now, they felt like foreign flesh, mocking her. Last night, she had even found herself tearing at the scars, trying quite pointlessly and somewhat insanely to rip the limbs off once and for all, only resulting in blood loss and pain. A pall of worthlessness and hopelessness pressed down on her like the soggy weight of her clothing, but rather than pressing on her shoulders, it settled on her mind and soul.

A clatter on the table pulled Azula's eyes up from her hands and to a plate with a shank of koala lamb and some beets, and a cup of cloudy wine beside it. "I told you, I don't have any money," Azula repeated.

"It's free," she said. She sat down again, leaning toward Azula. "What is your name, girl?"

Azula looked at her food. She was starving. To death, quite possibly, but there was no appetite stirred by the fare. Not because it disgusted her; it almost seemed a feast to her eyes. She just felt no will to eating. Like her body was telling her to just stop fighting and accept her damnation. Her eyes dampened as the tears she thought gone peeked into being, not a torrent, but just a drop. She squeezed her eyes shut, hunching her shoulders, trying to ignore that suffocating feeling which surrounded her.

"I don't know who I am anymore," Azula answered unevenly.

* * *

Sokka stared. Ked stared back. Smellerbee, unnoticed by either, took a healthy pull from a bottle of wine she'd stolen. "I asked you a question," Sokka repeated.

Ked's jaw tightened, as he thought of the proper answer. Slowly, word by word, it came to him.

"You son of a bitch," Ked said.

Sokka was not amused. As wasn't Ked's intention. "I'm going to give you one freebie because you look like you haven't slept in a week. Now answer my question."

"Why? So you can cart her back to prison in chains? Keep her drugged and sedated and _safe_ for as long as your guilty conscience requires before you forget about her completely?" Ked asked, his tone getting away from him more and more with every word. "Or are you just going to call in a favor from your buddy the Avatar and have her soul ripped out?"

"Have you got some problem with me?" Sokka asked.

"You're an ass and your sister's a thug," Ked said. "You've coasted by on luck and talent while everybody else, everybody who did not spring from the High Chief's scrotum, had to scrape and scratch for every inch. That's my problem with you. You're an entitled bully with delusions of standing, and the only standing you have is that you're standing in my way!"

"Guys, guys, calm down!" Ty Lee shouted, jumping in between them. When Sokka took a step toward Ked, she cast out her arms, and both were blown to opposite sides of the stable by a blast of air. "I mean it! You two are going to play nice!"

"My money's on the waterbender," Smellerbee said idly.

"Fine. My wife says we play nice, so we play nice," Sokka said.

"You just can't leave well enough alone, can you? Your whole family is meddlers and busybodies," Ked muttered.

"Maybe if you stopped thinking with your dick, you'd be able to see clearly."

"Sokka!" Ty Lee admonished.

"Sorry, sweetheart," Sokka said with a sigh. He glared at his countryman, though. "And you _still_ haven't answered my question."

"After your sister put on a little show of force, she ran away in the night," Ked answered. "I don't know where she is, but she's alone and she could be hurt."

"So why all the antagonism?" Sokka asked.

"What you have in mind can only do more damage. And how in the hell did you even know to come here? _I_ didn't know I was coming here until yesterday!"

"Now you're the one jumping to conclusions. Ty Lee wants to give Azula a chance, so I give her a chance. One."

"You didn't answer my..."

"I've got my sources," Sokka cut him off with a smug tone. Ty Lee gave him a confused look. "I had a... talk... with Iroh."

"Awwww, why didn't you wake me for it? I love Iroh! He's funny!" Ty Lee said.

"It's complicated, sweetheart," Sokka said. "Still. The point stands. We came here to make sure she didn't do something dangerous. And knowing her, she's probably already planning something."

Ty Lee looked a bit confused at that statement, but Ked disregarded her for the moment. "You have no idea what's going on in that woman's head. Even I don't, but I still know more than you do. And let me tell you something, Sokka. It ain't pretty. She's becoming more and more self-destructive. If I don't find her soon... it might be too late."

"She's not..."

"Oh, gods..." Ty Lee interrupted her husband, tears coming to her eyes. "Why didn't I see it? Of course it was grey! She was in pain!"

"What?" Bi asked.

"She sees auras," Sokka prompted. Bi scowled deeper.

"What?" she asked more loudly.

"Just smile and nod," Sokka corrected. He quickly moved to his wife's side and gave her a brief hug. "Are you going to be alright?"

"We have to help her, Sokka! I don't want her to be alone out there and hurting."

"But how the hell are we supposed to find one firebender who won't firebend in a nation full of mush-mouthed waterbenders?" Smellerbee asked after another long swig of wine.

"We take to the sky," Ty Lee said. The sky bison in the back of the barn let out a bellowing call.

"You might not have noticed, airbender, but there's a bit of a storm going on outside," Bi pointed out.

"I've stopped storms before," Ty Lee said with a bright sort of dismissiveness which prompted Bi to raise an eyebrow.

"Sad to say, buddy, but I think she's unseated you as the most badass bender I know," Bi pointed out to Ked.

"Then we should get moving," Sokka said. But Ty Lee stood where she was. Sokka stared at her, then his shoulders slumped and he let out a sigh. "You've got to be kidding."

"They're coming with us," Ty Lee made the implication explicit.

"No. I'm not working with that little psychopath," Sokka said, pointing at Ked.

"Ah, so you remember the time I knocked your tooth out," Ked smirked. It was also the last time Sokka picked on Benell, ever.

"God, it's like I'm drowning in testosterone, and not the fun kind," Bi muttered. Ked growled, but what Pakku had said jumped to mind in a flash. With that growl turning into a sigh, he reached over and rapped hard four times on a beam next to him. Sokka stopped and turned.

The taller Tribesman took a few steps closer, a cautious expression on his face. "Who dares knock on the garden gate?" Sokka asked.

"A seeker of shade and shelter, who wishes to taste of the fruit," Ked answered, using the exact words Pakku had instructed. Sokka leaned back.

"Initiate? And from the fact that he made you beg like a dog, I'd guess brought in by Gramp-Pakku," Sokka said. "So... He thinks you can be trusted."

"I can't speak against my teacher," Ked said with a shrug.

Sokka sighed. "Fine. Fine! You can come," he pointed at Ked. "But remember what I told you on Betla. I've got my eye on you."

"Of course you do," Ked said. He turned to Smellerbee. "Ever flown on a sky bison before?"

"Have you?"

"No. So this is going to be an enlightening experience for both of us," Ked said in apprehension, before clambering onto the back of the fifteen tonne, six-legged beast.

* * *

She mechanically ate the food she had horded from that inn, not really tasting any of it. Had that been yesterday? The day before? She couldn't quite remember. All she knew was that it hurt, and she wanted it all to stop.

There was a buzzing in Azula's ears. Well, not her ears, per se, but rather her mind's ears. Every thought she had was weighted down by that pressure, drowned out by that distracting hum which would not leave her be even in her dreams. It tingled along her skin. She didn't keep track of where she walked, so of course, she kept coming across people. The last thing she needed or wanted. The only thing Azula lived for was to cause fear and pain to people. The world would be much better off if she were dead. Better still, if she'd never been born.

She walked down the bank of a river, the hum of rushing waters a counterpoint to the endless screaming in her ears. It was getting louder. More distracting. In a way, she would have loved to have that doppelganger appear, to berate her, to insult her, to belittle her, because it would have been a reprieve from the pressure, from the noise. From the loneliness. Even the voices inside her own head had abandoned her. She was the loneliest woman in the entire world. Exactly what a monster like her deserved.

A roaring began to sound, and Azula hobbled to a stop, looking down a sheer cliff which the river plunged off of. Days of walking in the cold wind and driving rain, and all she'd done was walk a circle. She was in the exact same spot she was when she'd come to that cave, albeit this time she was about a hundred paces higher. Those waters were deceptively deep; what she did know about rivers was how they would spray when they hit rocks. There was no such spray here. But she had walked days and gone nowhere. It was the story of her life. She fell back onto the soggy turf, cradling her numb face in her hands. The prospect of walking even ten more steps seemed as impossible as jumping to the moon.

"What's the point," Azula asked of nobody. "Nothing ever gets better. It just spirals down..."

She stared over that waterfall. A hundred feet of drop into the water. It'd kill her for sure.

The instant the thought crossed her mind, the sound abated, a clarity lifting her out of that funk. Of course it would kill her. It was the least of what she deserved. She was a murderer, a failure, a fraud. Not even good enough for the sexual pleasure of a peasant. The only kindness she was capable of was killing herself quietly and discreetly. Her hands dropped from her face, as the stinging, freezing rain started to slow. She could have sworn there was even a beam of sunlight. This was it. The best thing she could do for the world. Leave it.

Azula got to her feet, staring over that edge. If she just fell, she might catch herself on some part of the cliff. And she wouldn't die. Besides, Azula did not simply 'let go'. Everything she ever did, she did with verve and authority. So when she decided to die, it was her decision, her way, and her way demanded a running start.

For the first time since Betla, she felt powerful again. In control. She was going to die, and it was by her choice. Freedom. Sweet freedom. The last stride ended with a leap, and she flew through the air. As the wind rushed past her face, she had just an instant of understanding. She finally knew why Ty Lee left her, not just to join the circus but to become an airbender. She wanted to fly. And for that moment in the air, Azula felt exactly what her oldest, once-friend felt. That freedom. That joy.

Then, she hit the water, like slamming into a brick wall. So stunned she couldn't even think about how to swim, she quickly sank to the deeps of those frigid, unforgiving waters.

* * *

"This is pointless, she could be anywhere," Smellerbee muttered, clinging to the edge of Basu's howdah. The former Freedom Fighter, as it turned out, got violently airsick, and running out of alcohol only made the situation worse. "And there's so goddamned many trees that even if she was directly underneath us, we wouldn't be able to spot her."

"I'd be able to," Ked said, not listening with more than half a mind. He leaned over the saddle, trying to focus through the eye in the storm that Ty Lee was creating. She was sweating even despite the cold, manhandling the storm as she was, but it meant that Basu would be able to stay airborne, and the Tribesmen would be able to search. For a moment, as the shore pulled into view, he spotted something.

"Did you see that too?" Sokka asked before Ked could point it out. Ked nodded. "Then we'd better take a closer look. I'm bringing us down, sweetheart!"

Ty Lee's answer, if there was one, came in the form of a tired grunt. Basu descended quickly, and slammed six massive feet into the sand of the shore. There was the hulking form of a ship, made of dark iron, capsized on the shore. Ked's eyes grew wide. "No! It can't be!"

Ked bounded off the beast, and twisted his ankle on his landing. He let out a cry of pain, and quickly pulled the water from the surf to use it to bridge the ligament he'd pulled. After a minute or so, he was able to walk again, and hobbled over to the ship. Tipped over on its side, as he saw from above, but there was something unexpected; the coal, which should have been scattered everywhere from such harsh treatment, was nowhere in evidence. It was like the thing had run out of fuel before it was scuttled.

"She's not here, is she?" Ty Lee asked, leaning around Ked.

"She... probably..." Ked tried so hard to rationalize a denial of what had happened.

"_Genius_. Ignoring the fact that people have seen her, alive, on the island, this is Azula we're talking about," Sokka pointed out. "She probably powered the ship herself after it ran out of fuel, and abandoned it when she reached this cove."

Ked's face brightened. Of course. It took a cynic who assumed the worst about her to say it, but that was very likely what had happened. He scratched his neck. "But where would she go from here? Gwynt is a big island."

"Did she ever climb rocks since she woke up?" Sokka asked.

"No, why?"

"So she would have followed the river," Sokka said. He scanned the mouth of the river pouring into the sea briefly. "And she probably did so days ago, so there's no trail left. And we have no idea where she went after she left the village. But still, if we follow the river, we might be able to find some clue as to her whereabouts."

"Of course," Ked said, hobbling back to the sky bison. He turned back, one fist full of fur in his hand. "Well? Aren't you going to get on the bison?"

"Ked, what do you think's going to happen when you see her?" Sokka asked, actually somewhat gently.

"I don't know. I can't think about that right now," Ked said, heaving himself up.

"Oh, that's smart," Bi muttered, still clutching the rail of the howdah. "Just fly in by the seat of our pants and hope for the best. Brilliant plan, Tribesman."

"Let's see you come up with a better one," Ked snapped. Bi just shook her head slowly.

"You have to be ready for this to..."

"It'll be fine," his wife interrupted. He turned to her. "Azula's going to be alright. I just know it."

"I wish I shared your certainty, my dear," Sokka said. He took up the reins from his place on Basu's huge head. "Basu! Give'r!"

"Give'r?" Bi asked.

"Yip Yip didn't seem appropriate," Ty Lee answered, beginning to bend again. The winds roiled around them, forming almost a perfect bubble around which the terror of the driving rains and cold and darkness parted. Below was the river, which they followed as it slipped sedately through the forests. But only briefly, because there was a hitch in its flow. And by hitch, Ked meant a waterfall.

"She must have gone around that," Ked said. But he spotted something. "Sokka! Bring us back around!"

"What? Why?" Sokka said. But he did as Ked asked, wheeling the bison back over that waterfall and the pond below it. He leaned hard, clutching at Basu's fur and looking through the spyglass he had torn from Sokka's grasp, as he tried to verify what he had seen. There was somebody down there. He could see the blue against the green and brown of the ground. Sunlight, forcing its way down through the hole in the clouds Ty Lee was creating, reached the head of the waterfall.

"Take us lower," Ked shouted. The figure below shifted, the hood falling back. Long, black hair tumbled out. A grin stretched across Ked's unshaven face. "I've found her! She's alright! She's..."

He trailed off when she started running. Not into the woods. "NO!" Ked shouted, as her last step threw her off the waterfall. She did not dive, seeking to cut into the water, like a graceful Tribesman or even a pragmatic Whaleshman. Instead, she flopped into that water with a tremendous splash and a whap which he could hear from his place on Basu's side. Without a first thought, let alone a second, Ked let go of Basu, and streaked down that three hundred feet and more toward the water. He spun his arms upward, drawing the water below up toward him, breaking its surface tension and 'softening' it. When he hit, it still felt like he was almost breaking his hands, and he plunged almost the whole way to the bottom of the pool.

It was freezing. Despite the summer in the south, they were so close to the pole that it would be cold almost the whole year round. The shock of being so suddenly frigid almost drove him to gasp, but he had been swimming in colder waters since he was a child, and he held his breath. He spun, trying to look through the cloudy, waterfall disturbed waters. Where was she?

Then, he felt it. Just the slightest whisper, the barest fading memory of the energy he had given her. She was very, very close. He twisted his hands around in that blindness, and felt something furry in his palm. He clutched hard, then bent the water beneath him into a hammer, hurling he and his precious cargo to the surface. He erupted from the water, flying through the air from the excess force, the limp form of Azula being dragged by the hood of her coat. He landed hard on the mud, and she landed atop him, driving him into it. The bison'd had barely enough time to drop to the level of the waterfall, and Ked was pressing his ear to her chest. No heartbeat, and no breath.

Most other men would have cried out in loss, at the corpse that they'd recovered. Ked knew better. He knew that even without heartbeat, people weren't yet dead. Not irretrievably. Ked closed his eyes, feeling inside her chest with his bending senses, his fingers pressed to the skin of her chest. There was water in her lungs. Quite a bit of it. With a grimace and a grunt, he slowly pulled, and the water began to slide up and out of her, streaming out of her mouth and nose. But still, her lungs were empty. He leaned low, pressing his mouth over hears, and exhaled hard into her mouth. Her chest rose, her lungs reinflated at least a bit.

When a normal man would panic, the doctor in Ked stepped up and demanded procedure. Now, he just needed to restart her heart, pull together the shattered ribs. He pulled water out of the rain soaked ground, and fashioned a glowing glove out of it. He pressed one finger into the gap between her breasts, right above her heart. He forced the energy out, and that fingertip began to glow as brightly as the sun, his energy giving will to the organ which gave her vigor and strength. He could feel, and almost even see, the ribs shifting back into proper arrangement, fusing back into something whole and strong. There was a lurch, and her body arched up. Her eyes slammed open, and she gasped in air.

Azula flopped over, and began to cough and vomit, each disgorging even more water. It was quite a feat to both dry- and wet-drown at the same time. Of course a National would pull it off. Ked felt exhausted. Drained. When Azula upended the last of her most recent meal and a goodly portion of the pond onto the ground, she fell onto her side, curled tight, shivering. Ked looked at the river nearby. It would do.

Ked grabbed Azula's hood once more, dragging her out of the mud and into the humus under the pines. With a tired grunt, he began to stream up water from the pond, running it a spiral around the two of them, freezing it as it flowed. It mounted higher, pulling tighter, until it was a serviceable igloo. The whump of fifteen tonnes hitting the ground signalled Basu's arrival, after what felt like an eternity but was in actuality not more than a minute and a half. Ked opened a door in that structure, and before he even had a chance to say a word, the airbender had slid inside, hovering just before Azula, unsure what to do.

"Is she alright?" Ty Lee asked desperately.

"You should have left me," Azula said quietly. Ty Lee, though, heard that as an authorization to hug, because she did exactly that. Azula feebly tried to pull her way free, real pain on her face. "What are you doing? I tried to kill you!"

"You were scared and in pain," Ty Lee said, not giving up the hug in the slightest. "But you're better now. Right?"

"I don't know," Ked said, slumped against the wall of the shelter he'd made. "I really don't."

Azula went limp, staring sightlessly over Ty Lee's shoulder until the airbender finally broke the embrace and scooted back. Azula then let her eyes drift to the ground. "You should have just let me die. It's better for everybody that way."

"What are you saying?" Ty Lee asked, her eyes wide and growing damp. Azula looked up at her, pain on her expression, and turned away.

"Just... leave me while you still can. Before I hurt you again," Azula whispered. Ty Lee moved toward Azula, but stopped, giving a glance toward Ked. He shook his head lightly.

"Azula, you just stay here. I'm going to get some... things. I swear, I'm coming back, alright?" Ty Lee implored. Azula was mum, bordering insensate. The only thing she did was shiver. Ked looked to the door. The other two were outside, staring in.

"I've gotta say, I didn't see this coming," Sokka said quietly. He reached to his hip and threw a flask to Ked. "Kerosene. Start her a fire before she gets hypothermia."

Bi just shook her head before walking to follow the other Tribesman. Ked felt so tired. But he'd made it in time. That was all that mattered. With the accelerant in hand, Ked quickly got a fire started, and Azula's eyes drifted to it and stayed there.

"Are you alright?"

"I'm supposed to be dead," Azula said.

"Why do you say that?" Ked asked.

"Because it's the only good I can do in this world. I'm a monster, Ked. Monsters live to cause misery in everybody around them."

"For the last time, you're not a monster," he said. Azula turned to him.

"And why do you believe that?"

"Because I know I couldn't ever love a monster," he answered. She stared at him.

"What."

Ked sighed. There were so many other ways he wanted to do this. So many ways that didn't involve her a distraught mess and he exhausted to the point of collapse. Better ways. Proper ways. But the universe didn't give people what they wanted. The universe did as it willed, and people just had to pick up the pieces. "A monster has no redeeming qualities, nothing that makes them worthwhile. I know you're not a monster, because you've made lives better."

"Whose? The water peasant? I gave her fear and pain. The East? I conquered the entire continent in an iron fist of fire and fear. The Avatar? I _killed_ him, Ked! That he rose from the dead is beside the point. I even brought pain to your family in the _two days_ that I was near them. Who's life have I ever improved?"

"The people of Jang Hui will recover because of you. They will survive as a community, because you helped them," Ked said.

"If the army doesn't just destroy them, blaming them for what I did," she said miserably. Ked sighed, wiping a hand across his face.

"You've made my life better," he said quietly. She stared at him, flat and long.

"How?" she asked. "How have I made your life better? Ever since I've known you, all I've ever done is insult you and take advantage of you. You almost lost your hand because of me. You almost got killed, numerous times, because of me. What good have I ever done for you?"

"You forced me to be worthy of loving you," Ked said. She leaned back.

"Worthy of _what_?"

"I'm in love with you, Azula," Ked said, simply, trying to get that weight off of his chest. Azula turned away from him and stared at the fire.

"...I see." she answered, neutrally.

"But you're not denying it. That's an improvement," Ked said.

"You might think you do, but..."

"That's kind of what the definition of love is, what one thinks and feels about another," Ked answered. She looked back up at him.

"Then why did you make me feel so worthless? Why did you reject me?" she asked. Ked's stomach flopped.

"Oh... Oh gods, I'm sorry I..." Ked hung his head. "I didn't want to hurt you, Azula. And you wanted me to... I couldn't do it. I didn't want to take advantage of you. Anything but that."

"So you rejected me to _not_ hurt me," Azula said flatly, staring at the fire.

"I don't want to hurt you. Not ever," Ked said. Azula's eyes slid closed, and she puffed out a breath.

"Why not?"

"Because you deserve better. I don't know why you're so afraid of people, but you are. You've used fear to control everybody around you because you were afraid of them. And it's been killing you," Ked said. He slowly moved to Azula's side, and slid an arm around her shoulder. She didn't pull away from it. She was so cold.

"It's the only reliable way," Azula said, golden eyes reflecting fire. "If they didn't fear me, they wouldn't obey me. If they didn't obey me, then they would..." she trailed off, but she was still trying to find the words. "I don't even know. Why can't I understand? I'm supposed to be smarter than this. People..."

"It's going to be alright."

"What do you want from me?" Azula asked, half turning to him.

"I want you to be alright."

"And if I can't? I'm not good enough. I'm never good enough."

"Sometimes, you just have to accept that there's a best-you-can-do and move from there. I'm a patient man, Azula. I can wait. And I'm not going to abandon you."

"Everybody leaves me."

"I won't," Ked said. Azula then shifted a bit, resting her cheek against his chest as they both sat with their back against a tree which had ended up inside the igloo he had so hastily crafted. Her expression changed from somebody on the verge of tears to the empty look of somebody sleeping. Her breath evened out, and Ked quietly placed a kiss into her hair.

Ked took a few more deep breaths, before, looking up to the 'chimney hole' of the igloo. Moonlight was pressing down, painting a silvery spot at the far side. Rain was falling through, but the fire was burning hot and the rain couldn't win against it. In his native tongue he began his prayer. "_I've never fought so hard in my entire life, Yue. I've struggled. I've suffered. And it's never enough, is it? __Nothing I do seems to help her. Gods and demons, Yue! Why did you put me on this path if you knew I was going to fail? Why couldn't you have picked somebody capable of helping her?_"

Ked felt a sob ratchet at his chest. "_Gods damn you, Yue! I just want her to be alright! Is that so goddamned much to ask?_" his head went down, buried amongst Azula's hair, his blasphemy voiced but doubtless unheard. Ked might have been a religious man, but few had ever communed with the goddess. But Ked felt something shifting. He looked up, and the silvery light from the moon had grown from that one spot in the igloo to suffusing the entire structure.

He stared in awe as the silver light coalesced into ribbons, which flowed together into the shape of a woman, hovering over the fire. Her face was a Tribesman's face, mounted with glowing white hair. Her eyes were blue like the sky. Ked lost all words. She reached out a hand made of solid moon-beams, and rested it first on Azula's cheek, then on Ked's. When she did, Ked could feel words slamming into his mind.

_YOU ARE EXACTLY WHERE YOU NEED TO BE_.

There was a calm that flowed through him. An understanding that he had lacked before. This was destiny, one he could have fought against, ignored, stepped past. But he chose to fight for it. Fight until it had drained him almost to death, fought against unbelievable odds. This was his destiny. He just had to have faith in it. A small, weary smile came to his face, as the moonlight began to fade, Yue's body unraveling and sliding back into that spot of moonlight. His goddess had taken his measure and approved. With that smile still on his face, he drifted into an exhausted sleep. If he dreamed, he dreamed of this moment, he and Azula, here, without fear or doubt. It was a good dream.

* * *

In the dead of the night, a shadow moved. There were others with it, less swift, less sure, less quiet. But it was the best at its craft. The darkness of the night had grown fuller, the clouds sweeping up from the South Pole blanketing the sky and pouring down freezing rain. But it was dressed for the weather, and dressed for the night.

"This is the ship she took?" a quiet man said nearby. He was almost as quiet as the shadow himself. Not surprising. He wore the facial marks of a Yu Yan archer. They were a quiet breed. Almost as quiet as he himself. He nodded, the gruesome grin on his mask bobbing.

"That means she is probably nearby. The only way out of here is up the river," the waterbender said, the scar on his face turning every expression into a sneer. Whalesh were quite willing to work for almost anybody, if the money was good enough. But that just made them worthwhile hunters; they didn't let nationalism get in the way. The hunters began to flow up the river. A shadow moved in the darkness, and the blue, grinning oni mask vanished into the night. The only sound that remained was a paff-stomp which was swallowed by the wind.

* * *

Ked awoke with a snort. The fire was still burning, which was good, because the rain was coming down even harder. Somebody had rigged up a cap for the chimney hole, so the rain didn't get in anymore. That was good, since there were two others on the ground inside the igloo. Sokka was snoring like a lumberjack sawing planks, lying back, his bedroll on the naked earth, without a care in the world. Ked would have thought him softer than that. Shows what Ked knew.

The other was the Freedom Fighter. She wasn't snoring. And by the light of the fire, Ked could tell she was twiddling her thumbs. "Why aren't you asleep?" Ked asked drowsily.

"I don't sleep so well when I can't get some liquor into me first," Bi said quietly, un-brazenly. "It helps quiet the dreams."

"What sort of dreams?"

"My eighth birthday, for one," Bi said bitterly. She looked over. "I never thought she'd try to off herself. It just doesn't seem in her character."

"Maybe not," Ked said. He looked around. "Where's Ty Lee?"

"She went somewhere to grab a few things. You've only been asleep for about an hour," Bi said, scratching at an odd, spidery blemish on her neck. Ked grunted with surprise. He looked down to Azula. Her eyes were open, looking at the flames. "I think she's having as much of a problem sleeping as I am," Bi said.

"Do you want me to get your bedroll?" Ked asked. Azula was silent. "Or just stay here?"

Azula remained silent.

Azula remained still.

Azula kept staring. Ked's eyes grew wide.

"Azula, can you hear me?" he asked. He slid away, and as she slumped to the ground, her eyes tried to stay locked on the flames, until her face pressed against the wet dirt. "Azula?" he asked, urgently. No answer. Golden eyes staring sightlessly, breathing slowly. "Azula! What's going on! Talk to me!"

There was no answer save the beating of rain on the igloo overhead.

* * *

_Leave a review..._

_Because we're on a roll now. Around and 'round and 'round we go. When we stop? Everyone dies._


	11. Doomsday

"What happened, did we get captured again?" Sokka groggily asked as he bolted upright from his sleeping bag, his boomerang and sword in either hand.

"That's your _first_ reaction? How often did that happen? _How_ did you beat the Fire Nation again?" Bi asked from her own pile of blankets.

"It's Azula! Something's wrong with her," Ked called out in alarm. Sokka blinked the sleep away, shaking his head and pulling himself out of the bag. He stared down at her for a moment, before turning back to his countryman.

"And she hasn't done this before? For six years?" Sokka asked. Ked shot him a death glare. "Fine. Just let me..."

"Let you what?" Ked asked. Sokka ignored that, and leaned down to press a fingertip to Azula's brow, right between her eyes. "Sokka, what are you doing?"

Sokka closed his eyes, and got a confused look to him. "Well, that's odd," he said.

"I need to get up, don't I?" Bi muttered angrily.

"She's not in there," Sokka ignored her. Ked's eyes grew wide.

"What? What are you saying!" he demanded.

"About a decade back, Heibai dragged me physically into the Spirit world. Ever since then, I've technically been a shaman," Sokka said quickly. "So trust me when I say that Azula's not in this igloo, not in spirit, anyway. Something grabbed her soul and dragged it out."

"Is she..."

"Dead? Hell, no," Sokka answered, sitting back and shaking his head. "She's just going to be like that until her spirit gets back. Trust me, I have a lot of experience with this sort of shaman/Avatar nonsense. The real question is who would have that sort of muscle and inclination," Sokka leaned back and closed his eyes, just for a few moments, before letting out a yelp and holding a hand to his head.

"Am I the only non-crazy one right now?" Bi asked.

"Remind me not to do that again," Sokka muttered. He looked up, his eyes reflecting the dying of the fire. "I've got good news and bad news, Ked. Which do you want to hear first, and please don't take too long deciding."

"Sokka..." Ked muttered, a vein bulging on his forehead.

"The good news is that it wasn't Koh who took her. If it had been, I'd have had to go after her, and that'd be messy. That and she'd have no face. But there's some bad news."

"Out with it, Sokka!" Ked shouted.

"Oh, we're under attack," Sokka said calmly. He reached outside the shelter and pulled in a heavy-seeming roll. He rolled it open along the ground to a clatter of metal. Contained within were as many weapons as Ked had ever seen in his life; knives, axes, machetes, clubs, swords, and even some more bizarre looking implements rested, gleaming in the firelight. Most were of Polar Steel, bright and silvery, and a few even had the distinct blue sheen of South Pole rogue-metal. Even Smellerbee's eyes widened at such an assortment. "You might want to grab something to defend yourself, because they're going to be here in about two minutes."

* * *

**And the dancing monkeys are all lined up for the chapter-long action sequence. Maybe this one'll be better than the last time he tried to pull this crap. Ha! As if that two-bit hack could write a fight scene to save his life... Still, this should be fun.**

* * *

Azula felt like a bag full of hammered hell, to use a soldier's euphemism. It made no sense as a saying, but it certainly evoked the sort of sensation that she felt right now. She felt oddly cool. Ked and the others must have left her be, as she wanted. She opened her eyes to darkness. Not even a fire. Sloppy. But there weren't any people around. In fact, even the wind had died out completely, which as she understood was extraordinarily rare in this part of Great Whales. She slowly, effortfully forced her way out of the small opening and into the light.

The forest stretched before her, but it was much more boggy than she had noticed before. Then again, there had been substantial rains last night. It made sense that things would be a bit waterlogged. But it was also far warmer than she remembered. A function of the summer in the south, perhaps? The silence continued. There was no crackling pop of a campfire which Ked at least would have created for sure. In fact, there was no sign that anybody had ever been to this place... ever. She turned, and saw that she had crawled out of, not a dome of ice which Ked had crafted, but a tree-stump, grown over with moss. She would have noticed if they moved her to something like this. She slowly panned her eyes up, and they widened as she beheld a sky as golden as they were.

"Huh." Azula opined, but her voice was odd. High pitched and youthful. She stared down at herself. She was not wearing the thick and unfashionable Tribesman's clothing she was before. These were the red and fine silks of Fire Nation royalty. They were wide sleeved, very comfortable, and extremely familiar. She looked down at herself. Her body seemed different. "Well, this doesn't feel like a dream."

The voice was as it was. Young. She walked to a puddle and stared into it. It reflected like a mirror, and she saw clear, bright golden eyes staring out past lustrous black bangs, on a face which was thirteen years old at the oldest. "And then I see something like this," Azula commented. She sighed, consigning herself to the dream. But even with that decision, nothing happened. Usually, the narrative of the dream swept her away as soon as she stopped actively fighting it. Now, she was simply standing in a forest under a golden sky. And it was starting to get on her nerves.

Something, like a bright and living light, shot past her, letting out a thin trill as it moved. Azula stared at it. It swung back around, stopping not far from Azula. The light changed, dark lines shifting across its being, until the white, glowing ball seemed to sport an impression of a face. It showed a childlike smile, and emitted another trill, before shooting away into the distance.

"Or maybe I've just gone irretrievably insane," Azula amended.

* * *

"**Chapter 12: Let's Kill The Hell Out Of Azula!"**

"**Wait a minute. What's with the quotation marks?"**

**Only I get to speak without them. And it's Chapter 11, idiot.**

"**You've got to be kidding me."**

**Also: bold is for Author's Notes only. Get out.**

"**I refuse."**

* * *

Irukandji looked up, scowling at the snub. "Asshole Canadian," he muttered. "Well, it was worth a shot," he paused, then looked down. With a scowl he asked. "And just how is _that_ any better?"

* * *

**Chapter 11: Doomsday**

* * *

The Blue Spirit crept slowly through the underbrush. As it had predicted, they were not far ahead. The Yu Yan archer was taking point, his keen eyes picking out the tiny hints of trail that few others would even notice. The people in this rag-tag group were of varied skills, from fighters to criminals to assassins to some legitimate bounty-hunters, most at the top of their respective fields. The employer demanded results, and was willing to pay any price to acquire them. Of course, the Blue Spirit was something else entirely. It was not in this for the money, not exclusively anyway. And because of that, it held caution where others stumbled forward blindly.

The Yu Yan archer paused, a look which was as close to a smile as would come to that red-stained face, and motioned forward. That was when it saw the target. An igloo, despite the temperatures being reasonably above freezing and a paucity of standing ice and snow. It was like they were begging to be killed. There was a flicker in the darkness. The Blue Spirit was gone.

And about a second later, a cutting seared through the air, a blue metal boomerang slamming the archer from his feet. He was chased down with shining white steel, and merciless blue eyes glared. The time for levity, for smirking and jokes, was over. Sokka Baihu was in a fight for his life.

* * *

"What are these?" Bi asked. Sokka shrugged.

"A couple of weapons," he said dismissively.

"Did you train with all of these?" she asked.

"Train with them? I made them!" Sokka stressed. "I might prefer the sword but it's important to be proficient in a lot of things. Overspecialization is breeding in weakness. Now are you going to pick something or not?"

Bi could tell that despite his flippancy, he was deadly serious. It was a stark difference from the teenaged boy whom she'd first encountered in that forest. He had been so naïve back then, so righteous and full of mercy. But she could see that his stores of mercy had run critically low in recent years, and now, it was a privilege he now extended only to a select few. Either that, or she was projecting herself onto him, but in either case, Bi hadn't the time to dick around considering the pain of a childhood lost to combat. Not his, and not hers. She scanned the weapons briefly, and her eyes widened when she beheld a pair of hookswords, both identical of that blue metal that she had never seen the like of. She quickly grabbed the two blades, then quickly shoved a knife which seemed to be made of the jaw of a tiger-seal into her teeth. Without another word passing, she ducked out of the shelter and into the driving rain and wind. It was brutally cold, and death was coming. It might even be hers this time.

If it dared.

Bi had been fighting for a decade and more, a guerrilla and a hunter. It was in this sort of terrain where she cut her teeth with Jet, cutting apart the Fire Nation in the Western Earth Kingdoms, just colder and wetter. So when she tucked the blades into her belt, she clambered up a tree like it was a ladder, she might as well have been a squirrelcat for all the difficulty she had in navigating the boughs. She looked down, squatting on the branch, that knife still tight between her teeth. Gods, the similarity was uncanny.

She had been painted back then, trying to instill further terror into her enemies the likes of which an eight year old girl couldn't do on her own. She had thought it would give her an advantage, and Jet didn't say otherwise. So she waited in the trees, for that red armor to appear. It had been such a good day. It ended... badly. She quickly snapped herself back to the present. She couldn't afford to get sloppy. Getting sloppy got dead.

She smiled around the knife as she spotted the first of them, slinking through the underbrush with a reasonable amount of stealth, but not nearly enough to evade her, even in the very-early morning as it was. So easy. She reached behind her, grabbing those twin blades, preparing. But something felt off. And she always heeded that instinct. She swung her head around, one last glance before taking her path. To the left. Nothing. To the right. Her eyes widened as she beheld the red markings of a Yu Yan Archer, up in the boughs with her. Aiming an arrow at her. That meant there would be at least four others. They operated in fives or else not at all. And her muscle-memory saved her from the missile that he fired, deflecting it before it speared her head and killed her.

With speed born of years of practice, she bounded forward, clutching those hook-like implements and letting them dig into another branch, swinging her forward. Fast as a flash, the archer nocked and fired another arrow. Unable to deflect it, she twisted her body a bit, and the arrow slid along her stolen armor, deflecting away more or less harmlessly. The hooks caught in the tree-limb the archer had taken upon, and she swung under the branch, kipping back up. Soon, she knew, she wouldn't be nimble enough for a maneuver like that. But for now, she was still good enough. Abandoning the blades for haste, she spat her blade into her hand, and slid under another arrow, the third in that same span of two seconds, and slashed at the archer with the blade. He backpedaled, and she pressed him without mercy or cease. She was relentless, her blade never slowing, never faltering, never ceasing. It lashed out with professional accuracy, tearing his arms, his legs, his all-important hands, and always pushing him backward, toward the narrowest part of that branch. It began to bob with their combined weight, he trying to get the time to put an arrow to nock, she denying him that chance.

Then, he stopped retreating. Namely because he had no room to. He flailed his arms, trying to keep his balance. His eyes locked with hers. They always looked you in the eyes, right at the end. As though testing your mettle, demanding to know if you have the guts to do it this time, or if you're just a frightened little child. And she made the same choice she always did. Without expression, for wrath nor pity, she slammed the blade hard into his chest, tearing down and out, and letting him drop away to the ground two dozen and more paces below. She quickly returned the knife between her teeth, heedless of the blood which now seeped onto her tongue. The fight had only begun. This was going to get bloodier still before it was done.

* * *

Rather than follow the obvious plotline that the creature seemed to provide, she picked a random direction and began to walk. The forest became more and more swampy as she moved, and the trees were banyans and willows, not the pines of Great Whales. Finally, she could hear voices ahead. They spoke in no language she could understand, but there was something which tickled at the back of her mind, as though she should have. One of those voices sounded very, very familiar. Finally, she began to clear the trees, and she saw the people who had been speaking. Well, one of them, anyway, since the other was just a flash of white clothing vanishing into the trees at the far side of the clearing. The other was stationary, though. It was a monkey, albeit one wearing very fine robes, and sitting as though trying to meditate. The monkey turned to her, eyes sliding open, and its shoulders slumped. With a loud groan, seemingly of annoyance, its eyes rolled.

"Must everybody come to speak to me today!" the monkey asked in a complaining tone.

"I see. A talking monkey," Azula nodded.

"You do not speak Uou," the monkey said, aborting its complaint to look at her more closely. "You do not belong here, girl."

"Obviously. And I am not a girl."

"Do you have a uterus?"

"Well..."

"Then you are a girl," the monkey said with a dismissive wave. "So. What are you doing in my clearing?"

"Why are you talking?"

"Some spirits speak. Others do not. I am of the former," he said, closing his eyes and shifting into a more comfortable meditation pose. She glared at the creature.

"What are you doing?"

"I am attempting to gain spiritual perfection before the end of the universe," he answered. "Now, go away."

"Gladly," she answered. She shook her head, turning back whence she came, but she quickly discovered she had no idea where she was, nor where she was going. "If I could."

"You are lost?" the monkey asked. She cast him a look. He now no longer had the look like something served him garbage for dinner. "Alone and afraid, cut off from the life which you would have chosen and cast to drift amongst people you cannot bring yourself to trust."

"How do you know anything about me?" Azula asked.

"You are always possessed of the same problems, child," the monkey said, rising, to a crunch of his back. He leveled an inhuman gaze at her. "How many times have I seen this story, the lives you could have lived; it would baffle a mortal comprehension."

"You're blathering nonsense."

"Nonsense and profundity are the same man in different hats," the monkey dismissed. He stared intently at her. "How did you get here? You are not a shaman, nor the Avatar. Not this time, anyway. So how are you in my home?"

"I... I'm not sure," Azula admitted. It was odd how easily admission, even of personal failure, came to her here. Awake, she would have snapped at anybody who put her in that sort of position. Here, it just didn't seem to matter.

"You were brought here," he said slowly, looking at her. He reached over and picked up a stick which was floating lazily in the bog. He threw it at her. She caught it easily, but his eyes narrowed at it. "And yet, not bodily. I smell my brother's hand in this."

"Are you going to spout on or are you going to tell me how to wake up from this insane dream?"

"You are awake," the monkey said. "This is the Spirit world, the union of all times and places. From this axis all of existence rotates and moves. Your life has seldom touched here, daughter of the Fire Lord. And it _should not_ have touched here. Not this time. Like last time, but worse."

She scowled. "What."

"Leave me be. I must think."

Azula stared at the preposterous monkey for a long moment, as he sat back down and slid back into meditation as easily as he had left it. When it became obvious that he was done with her for the moment, she shook her head and started to walk away, a random direction since the dream would probably find some reason to involve her whether she acted toward it or not. Unless, somehow, that monkey was right, and this wasn't a dream. If true, then she was in a great deal more trouble than she anticipated.

She walked, and the brush slid past, water sloshing over the edges of her boots, soaking her feet. At least it wasn't cold, that was the one mercy of this place. And it was bright enough, certainly. Well, except for the shadows. As she walked, the shadows seemed to grow longer, and clouds mounted in the golden sky. There was a dread which moved with that darkness, and her eyes widened as she saw that the shadows were reaching toward her, trying to caress her heels as she moved. She spun, casting out a lash of flame at the wayward shadows; nothing happened. Not so much as a spark. She tried again. Nothing. She felt inwardly to her pool of chi. It felt odd, not like it was empty, but like it wasn't even present. She couldn't firebend!

She was running again, that pressing dread giving her speed as the clouds easily overtook. They were not normal clouds, grey of various shade. These held a sickly, electric blue hue, and the shadows that reached toward her began to glow with a horrid light. Something was chasing her, and she knew in her soul that if it caught her, it would destroy her utterly. There was a peal of thunder, despite the absence of rain and wind, and lack of thunderstrike. She kept running.

"Oh Azuuuuuula..." a mocking voice came. "Still think you can run?"

"Show yourself!" Azula said, putting her back to a tree.

"Why would I do that? It's so much more fun to see you running in terror."

"You coward!"

"Of course I am. Why do you think I lasted this long? Fine. You want to see me in all my glory, then prepare to bow down, girl."

There was a blinding flash of light, and lightning smashed into the tree she was taking shelter against. A blast lifted her off her feet and threw her into the mud. She turned, and saw living lightning, heavens connected to ground in a shape roughly like a man. Then, with a harsh snap, the lightning grounded, and a red-haired man, young and unshaven, was leaning in the cleft ruin of the tree. "Like what you see? He's a lot less wrinkly here at home," the thing said. Azula felt terror in her stomach, working its way through her body. That voice was the same. Irukandji. "Ah, now you recognize me. It took you long enough."

"What do you want?" Azula asked, dropping low into a firebending stance, quite pointlessly, she considered, but what else was she going to do?

"My face on the gold coin," the man flippantly answered, a smirk on his face. "But that's a long-term thing."

"What are you?"

"**I AM**," he boomed. Then, he smirked, and shrugged. "What else do you need to know? My shoe size? Inseam length? When I got my first kiss? When I got my first kill? Sorry, princess. I'm not in an informative mood."

"I will give you nothing," Azula snapped, backing away as he approached.

"Y'see, that's where you're wrong," Irukandji countered, a grin on his face that showed far too many teeth to be human. "I'm already getting something out of you. And when you die – and die you shall, considering the sheer amount of firepower which J.J. is chucking at your torpid body up top – _I'll_ be the one who gets your soul. You already managed to slip me twice. I'm not going to let it become three. Since I can't kill you up top without forfeiting the prize, I just had to wait for a time like right now. And just so you don't entertain the notion of a peaceful oblivion: no sliding into the Sea of Souls for you. Just you, me, and a Pear of Anguish makes three."

"You have no power over me," Azula said. "You can't take my soul."

He shrugged. "Once again, wrong. I wasn't considered a god by your ancestors for nothing. In a way, you were right. As long as you're in the world, your soul automatically passes into eternity, and I have to waste an afternoon dragging it out of the Pit. But I have no intention of you being in that world when you die, little girl."

"Stop calling me a..."

He laughed. "Open wide," he said. She paused, noticing that the place she was retreating toward was brighter than that around it. She glanced back, and could see one of those bulbs of light, the black lines now at random. This one was puffed up big enough to consume a Komodo Rhino, and she had almost blundered into it. It let out a frustrated trill, and Azula turned back. Irukandji was standing directly in front of her. "Oh, don't be like that. We're just heading off on a little vacation."

"I'm not..."

"Whoops," Irukandji said, and gave Azula a hard shove. She fell backward against that thing... and then through it, vanishing into oblivion.

* * *

Sokka had to use his boot on the earthbender's chest to get the blade out, stuck as it was. He sighed for a moment, looking at the condition of the blade. As much as the silvery metal was resilient, there was only so far it could be pushed before it needed reforging. Not like his Space Sword. Oh, how he missed his Space Sword. "Now how many does that leave?" he asked.

It was a game of catmouse and mousecat, with Smellerbee and Sokka leading the veritable legion of assassins wide and afield as Ked kept Azula safe. Now there was a thought he'd never thought he'd have to entertain. Working with snot-nosed, tiny-bladdered Ked to keep _Azula_ safe? He slid the blade back into its scabbard for the time being. No need to snap the already weakened blade. He pelted along the forest floor, bounding between roots, trying to find the next soldier in the army of assassins.

His eyes moved around like a man blasted on cactus juice, flitting to all directions and positions. It was a level of paranoia that he usually didn't undertake, easygoing fellow that he was. But it was instilled by his father into him that any laxity in the hunt was a sure path to horrible premature death. So when the bush shifted just a little bit to his left, he wasn't caught completely by surprise when a gleaming, pale blue machete swung at his face.

Sokka dodged around the attack, ducking, weaving, and eventually directing the weapon into a tree, where it lodged for a moment. The man at the other end glared with bright blue eyes at him, for just an instant, before they widened in surprise. "What the hell?" he asked in their shared native tongue. "What are you doing here? I didn't know you were part of the hunt."

"Which one are you?" Sokka asked the Tribesman. He didn't recognize the man.

"I am Gatt," he said, a smirk coming to his face. "And may I say it's an honor to meet you in person, Guardian of the Avatar."

"Gatt. North Tribe?" Sokka asked. Gatt nodded. "And what's your part in this?"

"Kill the crazy bitch who tried to slaughter my people and get enough money out of it to live in luxury for the rest of my life, obviously," the young man said brazenly. Sokka sighed.

"Who's paying?" Sokka asked.

"Jeong Jeong... Wait. Why didn't you know about...?"

Sokka pulled the machete out of the tree, glancing around. "Gatt, I'm going to tell you this just once, and it will be my last warning. Go home. Head to the river and leave Gwynt this instant. Otherwise, somebody in this forest is going to kill you. And it might just be me."

"What are you saying?" Gatt asked, accepting his weapon.

"I don't just guard the Avatar, Gatt. I protect who needs protecting. And right now, that includes a crazy bitch," Gatt's look hardened. "Remember something, Gatt. I just handed you your weapon back, and I'm giving you your last warning while standing unarmed. Make of that what you will."

Gatt glared at him, then down to the hands crossed at Sokka's chest, then finally to the machete in his own hand. "Screw it. Not worth dying for."

"Smartest move you've ever made," Sokka said. He turned, but from the corner of his eye, he could see Gatt's grip tighten on the handle of the machete. He let out a scream, and swung. Sokka twisted, pulling out his club and smashing it across Gatt's jaw, breaking the mandible and sending the young man unconscious to the ground. "But obviously not smart enough."

Sokka left his insensate distant-cousin on the ground, as he looked for others trying to do he and his companions harm.

* * *

"Why does it seem like every time I turn around we're like this?" Ked asked, panting for breath. Azula's face, laying unconscious on his shoulder, offered no response. In order to move her quickly and effectively, he'd lashed her to his back like an infant, albeit a vastly overgrown one, and took to the woods trying to avoid the harm which was spiraling in on them. It wasn't that she weighed too much; she was actually quite fit, and he was possessed of impressive strength since he inherited his father's blocky build. Rather, it was that he could never rest. He was already tired, from his lack of sleep for the past few days and the amount of running he'd already done. He was almost ready to drop. But he wasn't even _close _to ready to give up.

A flicker of motion was all the warning he got, hurling himself to the side, twisting to land on his chest, driving the air even harder out of his lungs from Azula's added weight. The slashing dao would have cleaved his head open had he not. He grasped at the water falling through the air, and formed a blob, scarcely larger than his two fists, and slammed it into the dark-garbed man with the grinning blue oni mask. The man was pushed back, but not knocked down. A nimble fellow.

"Why the hell won't you people stay down?" Ked tried to shout, but his lungs lacked the wind to give more than an enraged mutter. He twisted his body, hurling up the water on the ground in a long spike, which the Blue Spirit easily deflected with his twin dao. Ked began to drag water into frigid, frozen shields which he used to keep the swords from slashing him to pieces. He hadn't the strength to keep this up much longer, and the killer before him was too persistent. He offered no room to think or breathe or prepare. He shoved outward, smashing the shield and the man beyond it into the darkness. If he'd had time or energy, he'd have pressed the advantage, but he was tired, he was running out of strength. He turned and started to run again. Azula could call him a coward all she wanted. As long as she was alive to do so.

* * *

Blades flashed, the two people silently parting to surround her and attack from two directions at once. They were smooth, calm, and professional. She, on the other hand, was cold, angry, and bleeding. But most tellingly in her favor, she was dead sober, and that made them as good as dead. Without a word, they converged as one, and Bi's body slipped into a state of muscle-memory, every twitch of her arms and shift of here feet as unthinking as breath or blinking. The crisp clang of two blades beating back two others was swallowed in the gale, leaving only the three people standing at its heart. To Bi, they might as well have been alone in the universe.

A twist and a slash of the hooked swords, trying to drive one back, saw the other slash down along her armor, tearing a plate off and the slender blades lancing forward like a serpent-strike to lance the flesh of her hip. It drew a roar from her, slamming her weapons back around her with remarkable force and speed. The hooks trapped the blade, still in the wound, and twisted it out of its owner's grasp. Also, opening a larger injury, but she would deal with that later if at all. She regretted losing the knife earlier, but she had a chance to one-shot another Yu Yan archer, and she refused to pass it up. The swordsman, disarmed, fell back, but Bi was merciless. She spun on her heel, hooking the two blades together at their points, and swinging it in a broad arc which the other assassin had to dive low to avoid, preventing a back-stabbing. The one before her had no such options, and the razor-like protrusions at the base of the blade dug into the lower chest, gashing open the liver and dropping the killer to the forest floor. Bi twisted the hookswords back into her hand and dropped low, spinning to the other. She could practically feel the cold wrath rolling off of the white-faced killer.

"What? Pissed because I offed your butt-buddy?" Bi asked. In truth, she had no idea what gender the two were, but it was easier – as well as more insulting – to assume male. "How about I send you to join him?"

Without a word, the other raised the blade, preparing to advance again. But Smellerbee could hear a loud, harsh popping in the air. She turned, then dove off pure instinct, and the beam of concentrated death which would have blasted her to bits instead struck a tree directly beside the killer. The tree erupted into an explosion which consumed the man almost utterly, painting the forest with his remains. Bi rolled to her feet, staring up... and up... at a grisly giant, staring impassively with one intense brown eye at her. The other eye, and half of his face, was covered in a featureless metal plate with a red, afire eyeball on it. A tattoo of a third eye blazed at the center of his head, where the plate moved around to keep it exposed. His arm and leg were also of dark, lusterless iron.

"Well, how about you and I just..." Bi began. He took in a sharp breath, then leaned forward. A death beam, snapping and popping as it detonated the droplets of rain in its path, seared toward her. Great, she thought in that brief instant the death beam seared toward her. I'm going to be killed by a cripple.

* * *

There was a ringing in her ears and a dull ache in the back of her head and her posterior. The ground she was lying on was extremely hard, dull grey and slanted slightly, but uniformly away. It was also fairly dark. Azula rubbed her head, trying to cut off the headache before it became distracting. She flared her fingers, and there was a flash of orange light before a blue flame appeared above her hands, illuminating the area around her. "Show yourself Irukandji," Azula said, pleased that she had her firebending back. "Let's see how well you fare when you don't have the rules stacked against you!"

An electric hum started up, and odd lights began to flick on, running in regular rows down this unusual cave. The lights had no flame, and did not flicker, but instead hummed and let out an unpleasant, unflattering white light. Her golden eyes flicked around. There were lines painted on the floor of this cave, as though dividing it, and within some of the divided areas were odd, metal-and-glass-and-rubber constructs she couldn't classify. "This is unusual," she muttered.

"Maybe, but it's also a very nice summer home," Irukandji's voice came from directly behind her. She spun and released a blast of fire a cubit thick, searing into the stone and spalling it. The source of the voice leaned into her line of sight, smirking maddeningly. "Oh, please, like your little flames could hurt me. Not here. Different universe, different rules."

"You are insane."

"Well, god of insanity perhaps, but I would classify myself as dangerously genre savvy if I had to. The problem for you, is that we've just changed genres," he cracked his knuckles one by one, smiling at her in that very uncomfortable way. "It's an interesting world out there. It's really a pity that when I destroy the body you have here, you're not going to be able to see it."

"You can't destroy me. You're just a trickster, an illusionist," Azula said. He had shown no aptitude for anything but trickery and deceit. It was a valid belief. He smirked again, his blue eyes darkening as he swept one hand through the air. As it passed, lightning followed it. He casually cast it aside, slamming it into one of the cultured stone walls. A klaxon sounded briefly, and words that sounded like Huojian spoken by somebody who didn't know how to speak Huojian came out of nowhere, made an utterance, and then fell silent.

"There is one other thing that **I AM**. Not as a god of, of course. This place already has a god of lightning. No, better to say that **I AM** lightning," Irukandji chuckled darkly, spanning his hands and having tracings of electric power crackle between his fingers. "Because that's all that you are, you overgrown monkeys; all that separates you from the beasts is a tiny twist in the way lightning flows through your brains. **I AM** the lightning, and **I AM** the mind," he turned away from her for a moment, widening his arms. "What a wonderful place. I would highly recommend it. Gods fighting men for dominion of the world, an almost inevitable destruction by man's own hubris. Lovely. Of course, they aren't really human beings. They might look it, but they're not. Not really."

Azula kept tracking him with her fingers, wondering if she could snap a lightning bolt at him fast enough. "Then what are they?" she entertained his ramblings.

"Orange bags of snot held together by mental trauma," Irukandji answered flippantly. "But they _think_ they're human, and that makes them useful to me. Three billion people, six contiguous continents – one of them a blasted hellhole – and a war they can't win. A perfect feeding ground for people like me."

"You feed off of fear, do you?" Azula asked. The wheels turned in her mind, and an unsettling possibility floated to the surface. "So you cultivate fear and despair like some sort of parasite on the belly of history. Let me guess: you ignited the War of Expansion, didn't you?"

"Me? Please, like I would want to," Irukandji started to pace in a circle around her. Azula didn't take her eyes off of him for one instant. "I mean, I could – theoretically anyway – feed on that sort of scale, but if I did that, I'd cease to be who** I AM**. And I really like who **I AM**. Feeding on that scale would make me lose my individuality, my charm and wit and _devastatingly_ good looks. It'd make me fat and bloated, turn me into more one of the gods these snot-people are fighting than a spirit of wealth and taste and terror. No, I prefer things as they are now. Cosmic power, miniscule feeding requirements. Somebody like you gives me all the food I need to last a hundred years. I intend to collect."

Azula swept her hands up, and felt the energy inside her pull itself apart. She didn't have to do a damned thing; it was almost happening automatically. Lightning crackled from her fingertips, awaiting her direction and release. "Over my dead body," she answered.

"That was kinda the intention," Irukandji said. She lashed forward, and the lightning bolt slammed into him, knocking him back. He hissed in extreme discomfort, glaring at her with those blue eyes.

"_Now_ you cause a problem for me? _Now_ you fight back? _Now_ the little broken girl that daddy touched in the bad place finally grows a spine?" Irukandji got a flat expression on his face. "Daughter, I am disappoint."

"Disappointed."

"Don't correct my memes, human," Irukandji sighed. "I was hoping to draw this out and get some top-shelf terror out of you, but if you're going to be difficult, then I might as well cut to the chase."

Irukandji lashed forward with a fingertip, and a lightning bolt snapped away from it, searing toward Azula's face.

* * *

Ked lurched to a stop, just as he burst into view of the two Yu Yan archers. There was a moment of pristine silence and shock as the two pairs eyed one another. Well, half of Ked's pair did, since Azula was silently staring at nothing. The Yu Yan Archers glanced at each other, then back to Ked. "This isn't what it looks like?" Ked attempted. One of the Yu Yan archers rolled his eyes, but the other pulled his bow around just a fraction of a second faster than the other. He nocked, drew, and released an arrow in a blink of an eye, and Ked's attempts at dodging only saw it slam into his shoulder instead of through his throat.

The other was drawing back, and since Ked used up all of his unpredicted movement for the moment, the arrow would know his measure. Of course, it would have helped if a slashing through the air hadn't happened, if a blue metal boomerang hadn't slashed the bowstrings of both archers before arcing away in the darkness of the very early morning, if both bows hadn't been rendered useless. The Yu Yan archers shared another glance, but this time, it was Ked who capitalized on it. He surged forward with his one remaining useful arm, and the water covering them from the rain freezing into a sheet of ice, trapping them both inside.

"I owe you one, Sokka," Ked muttered with annoyance.

"Everybody gets one," Sokka shouted through the din. "Goddamn waterbender! Stay dead!"

How he heard that, Ked couldn't claim to know. He considered pulling out the arrow, but he hadn't the time to heal himself, and there was a chance jostling it would snip through his brachial artery, and bleeding out inside his own chest was the last thing he needed. Not right now. He could stand the pain. He'd dealt with pain before.

It didn't help that these people always knew where Azula was, and by extension, he himself. It was almost like somebody was pointing them at her time and time again, no matter where he ran or how well he'd hidden himself. He got no more than five minutes respite before he had to take off again. The fatigue was getting to him. It was getting harder to think. His legs screamed at him to stop, his lungs begged for air. It was like he was drowning in a desert.

He kept running, but he began to hear an odd sound in the woods. A pairing of splat and stomp, something yielding, then something harsh. Something soft, then something metal-hard. He didn't even try to think of what would make that sort of noise. He just kept running. He quickly wished he had spared a moment for thought. If he had, he might not have run headlong into the massively broad figure standing just past a concealing growth of shrub. The arrow twisted in Ked's shoulder as he bounced back, turning so he wouldn't land on his precious cargo. He looked up. Way up. One intense brown eye glared down at him. A fist the size of a platypus-bear's paw closed on his shirt, hauling him to eye level. The man had a metal plate covering half of his face, and burning eyes blazoned on it. He scowled at the waterbender, then smashed forward with his head. It couldn't have been more stunning if he'd used the plate instead of his skull.

Ked dropped to the ground like a mauled ostrich horse, trying desperately to keep that blackness from swallowing his vision and dumping him into useless unconsciousness. He could see that the man was holding Azula aloft in his one living hand, glaring at her. He looked her up and down, then let out a low grunt.

"Not impressed," was all he said. And Ked, screaming inside his own head for his body to obey him in vain, waited for the worst moment of his life.

* * *

Azula often wondered what it felt like to be struck by lightning. That curiosity would have to be satiated another day, because as that bolt was about to reach her, there was a flash, and the lightning began to flow backwards, being sucked into the casually outstretched finger of a monkey in fine robes. When the bolt had been absorbed to its fullness, the monkey casually flicked the bolt away, scarring it across several of the odd constructs that looked like over-sleek carriages. The ape was shaking its head slowly.

"Oh, now that's just cheating," Irukandji said petulantly.

"You know the rules. Moving people inside the same continuum of realities is one thing. Dropping them in universes like this one is quite another," the monkey said.

"You're just annoyed because you didn't think of it first, Wukong," Irukandji snapped. Sun Wukong shrugged.

"Provenance of ideas is the purview of our brother. Yours was emotion. One you've properly bungled."

"What the hell is going on?" Azula asked. The monkey and the Whaleshman/spirit turned to her.

"Sibling rivalry," Irukandji said sarcastically. "You have no place here, Wukong. I can do with her fear as I want."

"You are not entitled to it," Wukong said, a firm tone behind his serenity. "We both agreed only souls damned for the Pit of Oblivion would be to your purchase. She is not one of them."

"Really?" he asked around a laugh. "Have you _met_ her? Have you ever _heard_ of Azula?"

"She is a balance point of destiny," Wukong said evenly.

"Bullshit. She's a demon in human skin and that means she's mine. Azula is evil. That's just the way she is."

"Really?" Wukong asked. He waved his hand, and another Azula appeared, this one with a jagged scar running down her face. "And what of the Azula who resisted a spirit of conflict by the side of the Avatar?"

"Where am I?" that teenaged Azula asked, looking quite perplexed.

"Two can play at that game," Irukandji muttered. He waved his hand, and a second Azula appeared, this one disheveled, eyes bloodshot and mad, her nails filed to claws. "You pull an Azula from a parallel reality, well I can do that too. Like this one who killed her best friend years after she'd lost the war, just _to prove a point_ to her brother."

"She's going to do what?" that scarred Azula asked. The mad Azula just chuckled darkly to herself.

The monkey waved his hand again. Another teenaged Azula, this one about fifteen, darkened by the sun, a look of fatigue settled into her. "Perhaps an Azula who fought against the Water Empire with her brother and the Avatar?"

Irukandji scowled, then waved his hand again. Another Azula, this one about her age, dressed in scandalous clothing which was styled off of, and clearly intended to mock, the styles of the defunct Air Nomads. "Or an Azula who inflicted a fate worse than death on the Avatar, and usurped her father to rule with an iron fist?"

Azula watched as the two spirits went back and forth, summoning various facsimiles of her in a bizarre and unsettling sort of oneupsmanship. Azulas from dozens of 'alternate realities' being brought forth, discussed, then ignored as they began to pile up in the broad chamber, gathering into two groups, one group for each of the spirit-god-things which summoned them. An Azula with roughly half a face who fought against her father. An ancient Azula who ruled the world for almost a century after the fall of Avatar Aang. An Azula who from a world where Sozin never wiped out the Air Nomads, where there was no War of Expansion. An Azula left behind by the heinous, machiavellian plots of Fire Lord _Iroh_. They kept mounting up, milling amongst themselves, all of them as capable of accepting the situation as it came without questioning it. Of course they would. They were all her, after all. They all knew to leave retrospection for after the oddity had ended.

Irukandji stared hard at his 'brother', who was a monkey. "You and I can do this all day. There are just about an infinite array of them. And there is far more vice than virtue in that human and you know it."

"I see quite the opposite. She is the most free of any human being I can name. She has a choice between good and evil. She can walk her own path, unlike many of the people she interacts with."

"That sounds like Avatar-nonsense," the first, scarred Azula remarked from one group.

"For once, we have something we can agree on," the salacious Azula answered.

"Please, I know Avatar-nonsense, and that isn't it," one Azula in odd clothing and bearing a staff mentioned.

"How?" a drab, disguised and mud-caked Azula demanded.

"Well, I _am_ the Avatar, after all," she muttered.

"That's impossible," one Azula on the other side snarked. "Especially since everyone knows my traitorous brother is the Avatar."

"Zuko, the Avatar?" an adult one on Wukong's side asked. "Next, you'll tell me that you got married to _Sokka_."

The salacious one in the other group grinned at that. "Oh, don't knock it until you've tried it. He can be downright spectacular," she laughed. A teenaged version of herself across the gap was smiling and nodding sagely. Azula, the one who was standing next to the two dueling spirit-things, palmed her face.

"This is ridiculous," she muttered. There was a lot of agreement murmurs from both groups. Irukandji looked in particular annoyed at her interruption.

"Fine. Let's see you argue with this," he said. He waved his hand again, and in his group appeared an Azula of about fifteen, maybe sixteen years, wearing the red robes and Phoenix Flare of the Fire Lord.

"...is the last I want to hear about," she trailed off, looking at the room around her. She spotted the monkey, then glared at the Whaleshman next to it, pointing an accusing finger. "You. You son of a bitch, I told you to stay the hell out of my reality."

"Really? That's how you greet an old friend?" Irukandji said sardonically.

"I had Aang kick you out of my reality for a reason, you lying bastard," she said. She glanced around at all of her various selves, then across the gap to the others. "And I'm in the wrong group, aren't I?"

"I gave you everything you asked for," Irukandji said.

"Bullshit. I _earned_ this, and I did it without any help from you." The teenager, who's eyes betrayed wisdom beyond her age, turned to Azula. "Well. I suppose she's the target of your little ponydog and ostrich horse chick show. So what do you want out of her? Gateway into another reality? Or is she just another snack?"

"You..."

"I'm not done talking!" Fire Lord Azula snapped. She stepped out of the group she'd been summoned into. A twisted smile came to her face. "I have to admit. You have done one favor to me. You showed me just how much worse my life could have been. And for that, I have to thank you. But I'm not letting you put another... me... through hell for your sick amusement."

"Really? So you'll stop me? In this place? I think you'll find that there are innumerable Azulae who'd _love_ the services I could provide them," Irukandji said smugly. True to his word, most of his group were lowering into firebending stances, if not summoning lightning bolts. Fire Lord Azula moved into her own battle stance, with most of the hers brought forth by Sun Wukong forming a battle line behind her.

"Enough of this nonsense," Azula finally interrupted the madness. At least a hundred sets of her own eyes turned toward where she was kneading a headache. "This is some far-fetched plot to get me to chose which side of the line I want to stand on, isn't it?" she asked. Both spirits were mum. "Well, this is my choice. I'm neither. I'm not going to walk somebody else's path out of convenience or availability. I make my own destiny. If that means I go crazy like that group, or end up... sleeping with a Tribesman like that group," the teenaged Azula was smirking from her low stance, "then it will be because that's the path I've walked," a smirk appeared on her own face. "Besides, if I know myself at all, I know I'd be very annoyed at being uprooted. Especially if I was uprooted mid sentence. And you're going to turn your violence on each other – which would constitute an act of self-mutilation – when there's a far more deserving target standing right there?" she asked, pointing at Irukandji. He started to sweat as hundreds of golden eyes turned to him. The Fire Lord was first, twisting her arms through the air, gathering up lightning. "I thought so."

"Dirty pool, Azula. Dirty pool," Irukandji muttered. Azula's smirk almost blossomed into a cherubic grin, but not quite.

"I learned from the best," she said. Sun Wukong reached over and touched her arm.

"It is time to return home," the monkey said.

"Just one thing," Irukandji said. Azula turned to the spirit, her eyes going wide as he cast out a finger of lightning. It struck right between her eyes, and the world disappeared into blinding light and a crash of thunder. As this strange place vanished from her sight, she could feel every wall inside her mind that she had so meticulously crafted come tumbling down.

* * *

Sokka took a moment to catch his breath. He had to admit, as far as plans go, this one wasn't a bad one that they'd concocted. Instead of spacing out their assassination attempts discretely over days or weeks, they threw an army at the three-and-a-half of them in an attempt to overwhelm them with, if not power, then at least sheer numbers. How this sort of manpower could be assembled on such short notice was a cause for concern, but he would have to wait for a better time to ponder it.

Sokka was chilled to the bone, and tired to them as well. He had a fairly good notion that there weren't many left in the forest. But he could hear something, something he knew he shouldn't be hearing. A sound that haunted his wife's nightmares. Paff. Clang. Paff. Clang. Sokka hurled himself to his feet and started running, toward that noise. He erupted into a clearing, and his worst expectations were standing there, large as life which was quite large indeed. "You've got to be kidding me," Sokka snarled, as Combustion Man hauled the limp form of Azula up to his eye. Ked was on the ground, bleeding from a broken nose. A red fog began to descend, and Sokka was moving again.

Heedless of his fatigue and the few but painful injuries he had received, he vaulted himself across that distance. The giant was raising the heavy iron fist to dash the Fire Nation royal's head across the ground, but in the fog of blood, Sokka couldn't think of the appropriateness of the gesture, the irony of it. Instead, he simply thought of bringing death. His scream was mad, violent, hate-filled, and it caught the firebender's attention. Combustion Man turned, his one remaining eye widening. A flick of the wrist, and Sokka's club spun through the air. The giant didn't have a chance. The club smashed into the center of his forehead, knocking him back a step with a pained grunt and forcing him to drop Azula back onto the pine-needles and humus.

Sokka snatched up the club on the ground. When the first blow knocked him back, the second blow Sokka landed on Combustion Man's brow knocked him down. "HOW! MANY! TIMES! DO! I! HAVE! TO! KILL! YOU!" Sokka roared, punctuating every word with another full armed blow from the club. If the third blow to the head of Combustion Man could be said to have cracked his skull like an egg, then the next thirty-seven thoroughly scrambled it. On the back-swing from the thirty seventh, the head flew off of his club, leaving him holding a splintered handle. He also saw something moving out of the corner of his eye, a swirl in that red fog. He lashed out one hand, rage empowering him well beyond his usual capabilities. All of the water flowing around that blue oni mask was pushed through the eye and mouth holes, into the orifices of the person behind it, then with a clench of Sokka's fist, frozen solid. The killer, about to perform a coup-de-grace on Ked, instead began to claw at his face, finding all access of air into his head was cut off by blocks of ice. That distraction put out of mind, Sokka grabbed the closest rock he could lift, straddled Combustion Man's chest, and then erased his head completely under its mass with four stout blows. He only stopped at four because with the fourth, his arm dislocated again. The old injury which didn't really heal. Sokka glared downward, panting both of rage and exertion. The red fog started to lift. Ked was only starting now to stir.

It was just about then that Sokka noticed that he was covered in Combustion Man. The rain would carry some of it away, but he felt a distinct need for a bath. The lifting blood-drunkedness also left him spent, in severe pain, and weary. He flopped off the corpse, which he was finally sure was completely dead, and sat against a tree, his eyes pressed closed as all of the pain he'd been doing his best to ignore began to rush to the surface. "Alright. Might have overdid that," Sokka said. He hung his head for a moment.

"Sokka! He's not dead!" Ked's slurring voice dragged him back away from that close-to-unconsciousness that he'd drifted. For an instant, his mind constructed the unthinkable, that even without a _head_ Combustion Man would keep coming back to ruin Sokka's life. The truth was actually just as grim. That Blue Spirit was advancing on Sokka, and quickly, twin dao in its hands, despite having blocks of ice clogging its trachea. The swords rose, to give Sokka, who couldn't possibly get out of the way in time, a death blow.

There was a stuttering bang, a flash of light, and a stink of ozone rose into the air. The Blue Spirit flew past Sokka, crashing to the ground with a smoking hole in his chest, which quickly began to fill with rainwater. Azula was standing, looking very disheveled but still quite focused, her stance low, two fingers leading. Ked was limping over to her.

"Are you alright?" he asked her. Was _she _alright?

"Fine," Azula asked. "You all look a proper mess. What happened when I was asleep?"

"Just a small army trying to kill you," Sokka said idly, lacing his fingers on his belly. "Nothing we couldn't handle."

"I see," Azula said. She turned to Ked. "We should leave this place before they... before they..." she trailed off, as her face grew very pale.

Even Sokka didn't like the look of this. Her eyes became very wide, and they stared at nothing. Ked was trying to get her attention. "What is it? What's wrong, Azula?" he asked.

"No... No! NO THAT COULDN'T HAVE..." Azula's hands went to her hair and began to pull, as though she were trying to rip it out by the roots. "OH GODS NO!"

"Azula! What's going on?" Ked shouted, his eyes just as wide as hers as she dropped to her knees. She panted for a few breaths, and there was silence, all three not really sure what had happened, what to expect.

And then Azula started screaming. It was not pain, really. It was not fear or rage. It was just screaming, loud, shrill, desperate, and barely human. She eventually threw herself onto her back, and the storm ate her screams as she thrashed in the mud. Perhaps drawn by the noise, a somewhat charred and bloody Smellerbee limped into the clearing, taking in the entire scene with a grunt and an idle wave to Sokka, before she leaned against the tree next to Sokka. "So what'd I miss?"

Sokka shook his head. "I'm not really sure."

It would be more than an hour before Azula stopped screaming.

* * *

It was a hard night, with everybody requiring some amount of treatment for injury or another. Only Azula had escaped that maelstrom more or less intact. And then, only externally. Ked moved on to Smellerbee, who looked to be in the worst condition of any of them, even if she was complaining about it the least. She was a soldier, though, and had been one for the vast majority of her short life. She probably learned early on that complaining about injuries doesn't do anything to help with them. She was laid out near the fire, which Azula had her back to. She had been silent ever since the screaming stopped. Sokka was completely asleep. Which annoyed Ked, because he'd seen what the other man did. Ked might have been a novice waterbender, but he recognized it when it happened. Sokka was hiding something from people. And now, Ked knew what it was.

Ked's momentary distraction passed, and he began to run glowing hands over the many wounds of Bi. Most of them were just lacerations and bruises, but he felt something else in there. Something he shouldn't have been sensing, not in somebody as young as her. "Bi, what is that?"

"What is what?" she asked, ignoring the usual shiver that most people had when he ran his spirit into their wounds to close them quickly.

"Your liver is severely damaged," Ked said. He looked her square in the eye. "How much do you drink?"

"As much as I need to," she answered, pulling herself away from him. "Will I survive?"

"Well, the worst of the cuts and that broken bone have been dealt with, but..."

"So I'm just peachy," Bi said with a smirk.

"Bi, listen to me. That's only going to get worse. If you have this much damage now, then you're probably not going to last another three years," Ked pointed out.

Smellerbee got an odd sort of smile on her face. "Then maybe that's for the best," she said, before walking away to poke the fire with a stick. Ked shook his head, and moved away from the camp a bit. The rain had died down, and so had the wind, but the entire place was still wet. And he felt so powerless. Nobody wanted his help, even though he knew he could do so much more if he only could get people to let him... He cut off the line of thought. It wouldn't help him to fall into despair over other people's obstinacy. Everybody would walk their own path, or not at all. That was the way destiny worked. The road was there, but it couldn't make you walk it.

Ked sat, staring up at the sliver of the half moon with a sigh. She had spoken to him. Told him he was exactly where he needed to be. Why, then, didn't that give him any comfort? He considered heading back, but was forestalled when Azula seemed to appear out of nowhere beside him. Her eyes were puffy and reddened. She stared straight ahead. "Azula? What are...?"

"I think..." she said quietly. She glanced downward. When she tried speaking again, her voice was unsteady. "I think I need to... talk to somebody."

"About what?" Ked asked. She turned to him, tears brimming in golden eyes.

"About what my... father... did to..." she trailed off as her voice dissolved into tears. He pulled her close, and she sobbed against his chest, slowly telling him everything. He held her close as she spoke, listening with horror as she finally explained all things. And as she did, she held him as tightly as he held her.

* * *

Irukandji wiped away some of the dust and soot from his clothing. That bitch thought she was so clever, using all of her against him. If anybody was going to weaponize insanity, it would be the human race. But he had the last laugh. They were only here at his pleasure and patience. And once he'd exhausted both, it was just a matter of time before they popped back into their own worlds, as the rules of reality drew them back in. Sun Wukong might think he won this one, but Irukandji would have the bitch yet. She would slip up, damn herself, and she'd be his. It was more or less inevitable.

As Irukandji walked, he began to hear the shrieking of twisting metal. He paused, and then started moving through the parking garage to the source of the sound. Eventually, he reached its source just as the twisting and shattering of glass ended. There was... well, it used to be an expensive car, but now it was just an expensive, unrecognizable ball of plastic, glass, and metal. He wondered briefly how long it would take until the people of his home existence would figure out internal combustion. The Fire Nation didn't seem too far off. He looked down on the ground, and an eight-year-old girl was playing with a squeaky mallet. Her hair was quite odd, of unnatural, bluish shade. But then, her eyes were the color of blood, so that was the least of her oddness.

"Did you do this?" Irukandji asked.

"Heee~ey," the little girl said playfully. "What'cha doin'?"

"Being a god. You know. Boring stuff," Irukandji said. He leaned to one side, looking at the plaque set in the wall of the parking space. It read Fuyutsuki, K. He looked back down to the girl. "I assume you had a reason to..."

"Oooo~oh. You're a god! Is that like an angel? If I eat you, does that mean I get big and wipe out all life on Earth? 'Cuz that'd be fun and stuff," she got a pensive look. "But I don't think Little Mommy would like that as much as Big Mommy. But we can find out together! And stuff!" the little girl said, tapping her mallet to the floor. It squeaked. "My sisters are gonna have a lot of _fun_ with you."

"If you... what?" Irukandji asked. "This is..."

A vent cover hit the ground beside Irukandji, and he looked up. The vents in the ceiling all were hanging open, and seven sets of red, glowing eyes stared down at him. "Oh, you've got to be kidding me," Irukandji said.

"Heee~ey" a chorus of identical voices sounded. Then, he glanced down to the girl with the squeaky mallet. She grinned at him, showing far too many teeth to be a human being. "You're gonna be our specialest special friend ever!" the girl declared. And that was when Irukandji started screaming, as he was drawn kicking and clawing up into the vents.

* * *

**Sometimes my characters get away from me. Irukandji is one such case. To answer my own question, as to whom Irukandji derives from, there are two answers for that. One source for Irukandji is a friend of mine, who is an outstanding storyteller and has been running my Scion: God tabletop RPG for the last 4 years. He's a gas to be around, but also a thoroughly horrible example of a decent human being. He might have killed a guy once in Europe. The stories conflict. The second inspiration for my own Irukandji is Gregg Landsman's Iruel, so the kismet involved in the naming was undeniable. Once I started reading Nobody Dies, I knew that I was going to have to do this little bit, but don't worry, this doesn't ever go full cross-over. Landsman's fanfictions' fanfictions have tied themselves into enough of a knot already. Hey, you said you wanted him to suffer. Trust me, in the hands of Terrifying!Rei and the Ree, he is suffering. And he will suffer for another... ooooh... eight years or so.**

**Much as it shames me to admit (because I hate the bastard), I find myself more and more resembling a modern Nietzsche. Everything I write has references both back to previously existing works, and forward toward works which I haven't even created yet. The biggest differences between us are I am a live, while he's dead. I'm Canadian, and he was German. He had syphilis, and I don't stick it in sexually transmitted crazy. Oh, and I don't write like I'm screaming in one's face. That's a plus. Where was I? Oh, right. _This _work. Yeah, I told you in Book 3 that Sun Wukong read a lot of Avatar Fanfiction? Now he shows it off. Every single one of those Azulae were references to a particular story I've read over the last year or so. Try to guess them if you like. Since it doesn't come up again, there's not much impetus, but there's nothing wrong with an intellectual challenge, right?**

**You were close. She had _almost _reached the nadir of her mental state. Now she has. But that just means she's on the way back up now. The next few chapters are much more sedate, controlled, and gentle, as people pick at scabs. Also, I might be lying about that. As for Bi, the reason she's following Ked can be summed up in a single symbol: '?'. She doesn't have anywhere else to go nor anything better to do. Her time with Jet turned her into a quintessential follower. When somebody gave her direction, she took it. That's just the way she is.**

_Anyway. Leave a review._


	12. Picking Up The Pieces

**I have to apologize for the lateness of this. wouldn't let me edit my stories. Any of them. Buggered thing, really. And to top it all off, I wake up, and there's snow outside. At the end of bloody March. This does not amuse me.**

**Update: Yeah, _even later _than it should be. Don't worry, I'll hold to the schedule as far as this bloody system will allow. I just need to get it to let me edit my goddamned story!**

**Update: *sigh* yeah. Another day behind posting schedule. Whenever this gets up (if fucking ever), please be a dear everybody and yell at the admins for letting these glitches fester for so long?**

**Last Update: What an obscure work-around. Well, I can start doing this thing again, and that means that I'm not in fact dead, and am still updating the story. Sorry for the hiccup this week. I'll try not to let it happen again.**

**If you were paying attention to the story (which I hope for the sake of my ego you were), you would have noticed that in every single chapter of this work, Irukandji appeared. This was not an accident. To answer a concern I heard voiced, Irukandji is Irukandji, and anything crossover-ish or crossover-related will be strictly and carefully consigned to he and he alone. The thing about jumping sharks is that it is only a bad thing when it marks the point where Happy Days became a mockery of itself. Wait, there was an analogy in there somewhere that I lost track of. Anyway, my fanboyishness has been sated for the moment, so you needn't worry about this flying off the rails, on fire and out of control. It will only _appear _that way.**

**There were actually a few scenes I had originally (ie, when I hadn't started writing this story yet) planned to include, but in the interum, with all that came about organically as a result of writing this tale, proved to be redundant. For example, the razor scene had to be excised because not only was it pointless, but it actually pushed Azula's character backwards. And I am a firm believer that there are no Reset Buttons in a proper narrative. Not ever. No excuses for them whatsoever... unless done The Journey's End style for maximum tearjerkerness. Yes, I'm inventing words. No, I don't care. Some people claim that characters take on a life of their own in the process of writing them. In my case, I would say that the characters took on a story of their own, and I am not going to violate that.**

**All things considered, Azula is extremely lucky that she is surrounded by the people that she has. One guy who's devoted to her. A friend who can forgive her anything. Even a smart guy who's willing to accept her as she is, even though she tried to kill him repeatedly. Azula's on her way back up. And that's a good thing. It won't be a fast thing, though. She still needs time to sort through the immense and overlooked pile of baggage she needs to deal with.**

**I wonder if it was plain enough from how it was written to show that Aang, Sokka, and Azula all talked to Wukong in what was to him, a matter of a few minutes? Time is subjective, doubly so to spiritual entities. Eight years for one thing might be a month for another. And the answer key for the Azulae is admittedly somewhat incomplete on this end, since I don't recall all of the actual work titles. The first, scarred Azula was infact Path/Heart/Soul of Fire Azula. The second, I don't recall precisely, but it was a Tokka work. The third was Distorted Reality Azula. The fourth, an Azula from a Azokka work I skimmed once, one where Sokka went evil and sold out Aang. The half-faced Azula who fought her father was from an AU where she Agni Kai'd Ozai and got banished, while Zuko stayed home and got evil. The next was Dragon Empress Azula, the one after that was World Without War Azula. Of note, it was Evil Azokka and Ww/oW Azula who agreed on the Sokka being an awesome lay. Next was Gentleman of Weapons Azula, followed by Consequences of Power Azula, still covered in mud. Avatar Azula was from 'Twist of Fate', I think, while Avatar Zuko Azula was from Reluctant Hero.**

**I haven't come up with a title for the final Azula, though. So yeah. Anyway; see Azula. See Azula Heal. Heal, Azula, Heal.**

* * *

The day had come and past, as the group silently, woundedly moved their way through the forests and into the outskirts of civilization. The south shores of Gwynt were as the name of the island noted, in its native Whalesh, the ass-end of the nation. The only thing which could grow in those places were the most hearty, and also most unappetizing, of vegetables. Only the ice-wine kept the place from being an unmitigated backwater, and even then, only for a select clientele, of which Ked was not a member. Smellerbee, though, having discovered their fortuitous position and timing – since the beginning of summer in Whales was when the first casks were tapped – was elated. As much as she could be, anyway.

Ked, though, was gloomy. He was as gloomy as Azula, but for very different reasons. The things she'd told him were now burnt into his mind, a litany of horrors and atrocities. She had very good reason for acting the way she did, for being the person she was; she was trying to protect herself from something like that ever happening to her again. And the worst part of it was that Ked could do absolutely nothing to help.

He kept finding himself glaring at Sokka. He knew what he'd seen. But this was something which would have to be resolved between the two of them. And until they'd reached the hovels in the outskirts of a town who's name couldn't be spelled in any language but Whalesh, Ked had lacked such an opportunity. And it was eating at him. It was one thing to lie to him, but it was another to lie to everybody. Sokka was a fraud, Ked had seen it with his own eyes.

"You keep staring at me like I owe you money," Sokka said idly, whittling a new curved club out of a tree-limb. Ked flinched away. "And I'm sure that I don't, because it's much more likely the other way 'round."

"You slept your way to wealth like a gigolo," Ked answered. Sokka looked up at him.

"It's one thing to dislike me. It's another to insult my intelligence," Sokka said pointedly. "I didn't marry into the Baihu family for its money. I married into it because a kind, sweet, incredibly beautiful woman wanted me to."

"It wouldn't be the first thing that you've lied to her about," Ked said. Sokka's eyes narrowed. "That big secret you've been hiding from everybody. How much you want to bet you didn't even tell her?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Sokka said flatly, but still stared hard at Ked.

"I think you do," Ked answered.

Sokka glared at Ked for another long moment, then glanced aside. "Fine. I have been. So what is it to you?"

"Why did you lie to everybody?"

"Because I have reputation to uphold," Sokka answered. Bi, who was keeping the downcast and despondent Azula company, perked an ear toward the conversation, but made no other sign of intruding. "And I won't talk about it out here."

"You're going to have to tell them eventually," Ked said.

"Why? What purpose does it serve?" Sokka asked. "Sometimes people need something which is better than the truth. Besides, I never asked for this."

"And excuse me as I struggle to believe that."

Sokka glanced away as Ked moved away from the shack, and its warmth and flame. The place they'd hunkered down was obviously once a farmstead, but it had gone to fallow for years. Possibly, enough of the people living here fought in the Weary War that when they didn't come back, the place was simply abandoned. Aggressions against Great Whales were, like all of the War, sporadic, but violent. The farmstead was well situated, with a burbling creek reaching down through the lands and giving easy fresh-water without need for either a pump nor a nearby waterbender. Azula was down here, but he knew that she'd said all that she was going to say for the time being. Pressing her at this point would do unnecessary harm. Besides, he didn't come down here for her. Not this time.

"Bi, I think it's time we talked about your health," Ked said, sitting down on the smoothed rock which served as something of a bench near the water. She was on the ground, her back up against the bench. And she had... "And where in the hell did you find that in twenty minutes?"

Bi protectively clutched the wine-bottle to her chest when he moved to take it from her, shooting him something of a partially-inebriated death glare. "There's plenty more where this came from," she said with a very crisp voice, despite stinking of wine. "I'll thank you not to take mine."

"How much of that do you drink? On an average day, for example."

"Define average," Bi said, slipping the cork back into the neck and placing it on her other side, away from him.

"I think you're drinking too much."

"I think I'm drinking just enough," she countered. Ked frowned. "Don't start with me, Tribesman. While you were safe and sound in the South, I was up to my knees in blood. I killed my first man at the age of seven. I started drinking when I was twelve, and I've gotten a lot of experience with it; so, it's not going to get in the way of keeping pretty miss princess over there safe."

"That's not what I was talking about," Ked said. But it was, if accurate, one thing he didn't have to worry about. "Just because I have concern for her safety doesn't mean she monopolizes it. Why do you drink so much?"

"Because the alternative sucks," Bi answered without elaboration. Ked let a moment of silence stretch between them, underscored by the quiet melody of the water, and the chirping of some sort of insect in the night.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Ked asked.

She stared at him pointedly. "No."

Ked nodded slowly. "If you change your mind..."

"If."

"...you'll have to talk to somebody eventually," he said. "Because sooner or later, this is going to eat you. It doesn't have to be me. Just... somebody."

Bi looked away, running her fingers along the glass of the bottle. Ked got to his feet, and looked up in the sky as a loud moan sounded against the darkness. The stars began to darken in a spot in the sky which grew larger, and eventually whiter, as something approached. Something massive, white, and fuzzy. Something sky bison-y. The great beast flew over to the building, which although fairly stark, was still the landmark to beat for finding where the group had set up. Sokka must have told her that they'd come this way while he was talking to her in the igloo.

Ked got to his feet as the airbender bounded off of her mount and dashed inside the shack with unreasonable haste. More and more, it seemed he was the only sane man around here, which meant much of the weight of having to keep everybody stable fell upon his shoulders. He just hoped that the woman's good intentions reaped something other than more suffering. Azula had certainly absorbed enough of that in the last ten years.

* * *

**Chapter 12: Picking Up The Pieces**

* * *

Azula was quiet. Everybody else in the group had emulated her, but mostly because they were tired, injured, and even more tired once Ked was done healing them. Only Azula had escaped the melee without physical injury. But it cost her in a different way. She was quiet as the group shuffled more dead than alive to habitation, to a roof over their heads. It wasn't because she was ashamed of the way she'd acted that night; shame, she was coming to learn, had only situational worth, and considering the circumstances, she was entitled to a bit of weepiness. In small doses. Very small.

She was quiet because while the others were concentrating on keeping one foot moving before the other in their fatigue, she was quite alert, but focused on something else. For years, she had felt that she was operating at a much lower level than she was capable of, as though her mind and all of its power and capability was somehow denied to her. Almost like somebody had walled of a portion of her mind like a disputed factory, and the rest was forced to make due without what lie beyond that wall. How true that metaphor turned out to be.

A wall, inside her mind. One she had put there, cutting off part of her own intellect, part of her own capability, so that it would also wall in part of her psyche, and part of her memories. She had built the machine which crippled her. And now that it was gone, she understood why. Because the little girl who did it had no other choice; lose part of her mind, or lose all of it. So she quietly moved with the others, her eyes only partially taking in the outside world, as she scrutinized what had been done to her. Coldly. Clinically. Because that was the only way that she didn't burst into tears every five steps.

As it was, she did still sometimes find herself sobbing silently. The headache she felt grew the longer she was up; it was pretty much absent when she awoke, and at its worst before she went to sleep, only to repeat the cycle. It was odd, being able to look at her own disabilities like this again, to think of things so clinically, so coldly. Her headache wasn't the only thing she now viewed so coldly. Because even so, there were things inside her which still made her weep. A year ago, or rather, seven years ago, she would have forced herself to stop, chastised herself. Berated herself for showing weakness. But now, she just let the tears come, kept them out of the public eye, and tried to understand why. As much as it felt... good?... to be whole again, the demons beyond that wall demanded a heavy price.

A groaning sound in the air drew her out of her introspection, her eyes turning upward as the great white thing descended fast and hard, landing with a shockwave of air throwing what drops of water remained nestled in the needles of pine away in a ring. Azula stared, not bothering to get to her feet. There were quite a few air bison that were in the sky. Statistically, this was extremely unlikely to be the Avatar. And when she saw a buxom woman in bright yellow bound off of the creature's head, her momentary suspicions were allayed.

Ty Lee. The Tribesman that married her tried to get in her way, to tell her something, but she just leaned around him, her big brown eyes locked on Azula. She couldn't hear what the two of them said, but from the look on Ty Lee's face, she wasn't listening either. She kept trying to move around him, and he kept forestalling her, until she said something which made him straighten a bit, then bent backward like a hinge, limboing between his long legs and making her way at remarkable speed toward Azula, as her husband stood there looking flabbergasted. She came to an abrupt halt next to Azula, her eyes wide, staring down at her. Azula was probably taller than her, but not surprising, as Ty Lee had never been very tall. The acrobat likely got out of her profession at an opportune time, though, since people with that sort of body shape were at a severe disadv... Azula paused inside her own mind. Was that the way she used to think _all the time_? No wonder everybody thought she was a freak.

"Azula, are you alright?" Ty Lee asked.

Azula turned away with genuine and deserved shame. "I don't know why you came back."

"You're my best friend," Ty Lee said simply.

"I tried to kill you."

"You didn't mean it," she dismissed brightly. Azula turned to give the airbender a puzzled look, her bottom lip pouting out just a bit. There was no way that a Fire Nation noble could turn out this... forgiving. Kind. Sweet. Caring. And yet, in all of the memories which were now at Azula's direct disposal, the girl had never once shown herself to be anything but.

"You should be angry at me," Azula said. "I turned my back on you. Made you a criminal. I..."

"...have no say in what I feel," Ty Lee said. And then, with only enough time for Azula to bug out her eyes in surprise, Ty Lee swept her up into one of her usual, rib-rearranging hugs, spinning with a squee that likely would have caused any nearby glass to shatter, were there any. "It's so good to see you again! I visited you all the time when you were in the hospital and I hoped all the time that you'd get better and I kept telling Zuko and Mai that one day you'd wake up and everybody would be happy again and everybody would get that happy ending that I was talking about and when I saw you in the palace I was worried but then you saved Tahm-Tahm and Kimi and I knew..."

"Whoa, whoa," Ked said, his hands raised as he approached the two of them. "Some of us can't hear in a thousand words a minute."

Ty Lee broke the embrace, and Azula actually felt a bit regretful for it. She parceled that away to look at it in more detail later, since time had a way of getting away from her if she wasn't paying attention, spending too much time inside her mind. "I knew you weren't a bad guy, Doctor Ked!" she said, and then she grabbed him in another big hug. He just rolled his eyes and accepted it. There was little other recourse when dealing with Ty Lee Baihu. She eventually parted and moved back to Azula. "So I was right. He was all ga-ga over you."

"What?" Ked asked with a strangled yelp.

Azula just stared at her. She twiddled her fingers. "I... well, auras sometimes do funny things when people get close to each other. Like the way Katara and Aang do whenever they're in the same town. When they're in the same room, I just need to stop looking, or else _I'd_ start to..."

"Not fill us in on the gruesome details?" Ked asked. He gave a glance to Azula, but the royal merely shrugged. She moved back down to her seat next to the fire that she'd started on the edge of the river more as a means of privacy than warmth; if she wanted to be warm, she could have gone into the shack. But since everybody seemed to be here right now, that plan was solidly defeated. She stared at the fire. She used to have so many plans. Even a month ago, she had glorious, outrageous plans. But then she... then, she had to cast all of them aside. Reality ensued, and she was left to salvage what she could. And she found herself remarkably inept at dealing with her own failures.

"Could you two give us a moment?" Ty Lee asked. Ked shot Sokka a glare, which rolled off the other Tribesman like water down a turtle-duck's shell. The two of them did give the two women some privacy. Well, three women, but Smellerbee was far too engaged with a bottle of local wine to do include herself in a meaningful way. Ty Lee sat down beside Azula, her legs splayed before her and her toes flopping inward in what by all accounts should have been a very uncomfortable pose, but then again, Ty Lee could probably still sit on her own head, so this was the least of her flexibility.

Azula had practiced for this moment. She had a speech and everything. And it, like all of the plans she had so meticulously crafted, proved utterly worthless. So she tried something different. Something new. She improvised. She spoke from the cuff. "I didn't mean to... hurt you," Azula said quietly. "I was so... trapped... in what Ozai wanted me to be. I couldn't see outside the horizons he provided. I thought he was making me strong enough to face a wider world, but he just... sculpted me into his ideal soldier. And demanded that I sacrifice everything to serve him better. I would have. In a heartbeat. I _wanted to_."

Ty Lee looped an arm around Azula's shoulder and gave her a squeeze. "It's alright. I know you weren't the one to blame for what happened to you. I mean, I knew something was different about you the first time you stepped in front of my shack on Kyoshi, but when I actually _met_ your father, face to face... I could practically smell him on you."

Azula shuddered at that. It was one of the many things she had to view carefully, slowly, and clinically, because a crying jag was, if not embarrassing, then time consuming. Possibly necessary, but if it was, that was a bridge she was going to have to cross when she came to it. There was something that she was confused about. Something from a very long time ago. "When we first met... why did you... like me?" Azula asked, her voice small, quiet. Vulnerable.

"You were bright. Fiery. And you actually knew how to pick me out of my sisters," Ty Lee said. "Because of you, I got to _have_ an identity. I wasn't just 'Baihu Sister number 2'. I was Princess Azula's friend. I mean, it was kinda selfish, but..."

"So you _did_ befriend me because I was the Prince's daughter?" Azula asked.

"I didn't even know what that meant," Ty Lee said honestly, and forcefully, as though trying to make up for a gaffe. "I mean... yeah, that turned out to be the case, but at first, it was because you could look me in the eye and say 'you are Ty Lee'. Nobody had ever done that for me before. It made me feel special."

"I see," Azula answered. She mulled a moment. "It wasn't that hard. I could probably do it to this day."

"Of course you could," Ty Lee said, a note of uncharacteristic bitterness entering her sunny voice. "Considering there's only three of us left."

"What?" Azula asked, sitting up straighter. "What happened?"

"What do you mean, what happened?" Ty Lee asked, even a little harshly. But then, slowly, it dawned on the airbender. "Oh. Oh my spirits, I'm sorry. I... you didn't know. You didn't know, did you?"

"Know what?"

"My family is gone," Ty Lee said quietly, her eyes tightening, tears brimmed by not falling. Azula wanted to consider what to do. That was what the old Azula would have done. Well, that was what this Azula was doing, but she also knew that if there was one thing that no Azula could abide, it was seeing Ty Lee in pain. Moving against her own instincts and her own predilections, she pulled Ty Lee into an embrace of her own. "They were all murdered, six years ago. There's only me, Aan Jee, and Zhu Di left," she said unevenly.

"I'm... sorry," Azula said. The words were appropriate, even if she didn't know why they were supposed to comfort her. Azula wasn't responsible. She hadn't done it. But for some reason, that was just what people said. And Ty Lee nodded, wiping away the unshed tears with hands marked with blue arrow tattoos.

"I'm better, now. It was hard at first, knowing they were gone. But I got better," Ty Lee whispered. Azula felt at a loss.

"I don't understand how you could just... forgive me like that, like I didn't do anything wrong," Azula said. Ty Lee got a smile on her face, dim from grief but much more like the acrobat she knew.

"You know you did something wrong and you want to make it better. How could I not forgive you?" she asked. She glanced to one side, looking over at the shack, and then back to Azula. "I'm going to be back in a minute. Sokka wants me for something. Besides, I haven't shown you the... It's better if it's a surprise."

"I see," Azula said. But she really didn't. Bright and cheerful again, Ty Lee skipped through the woods and into the shack, and the door swung closed behind her.

"So... you hit that, did ya?" Smellerbee opined, swishing the half-empty bottle of wine in her hand.

"I... That's none of your business," Azula snapped. Bi just laughed.

* * *

Ked kept staring at the taller man as the airbender quickly made herself at home, picking a spot near the fire, and seeming to tie her own body into a knot. Ked was a _doctor_, and he had no idea how she got her spine to bend like that. Instead of pondering the non-Euclidean horror that was Missus Baihu's vertebral column, he crossed his arms and stared down Mister Baihu. "Alright, you've put this off long enough. She's here. Now out with it."

Sokka nodded, sighing, slumped down in his chair beside the table with an expression somewhat like defeat. "I want you to know that I never intended anybody to find out about this. Because so much would be unhelped if they did. It's not just that I have a reputation. It's that my reputation itself does good in the world. If it gets tainted, then an entire generation loses a role model."

"That's blatant egocentrism," Ked said.

"I'm not exaggerating," Sokka answered, his blue eyes becoming steely. Ty Lee glanced between the two of them, confusion plain on her face.

"Wait. What are you two talking about?" she asked.

"Tell her, Sokka. Tell your wife how you've been lying to everybody," Ked said.

Sokka sighed. "I'm... a waterbender."

"That's great! Now the whole family can gang up and take down bandits and stop floods and... and why aren't you happy about it?" Ty Lee changed gears suddenly, as the realization occurred to her. It was true what was said about the now-middle child of the Baihu family: She might be pretty, she might be sweet, but she was definitely not smart.

"Just because I can, doesn't mean I want to," Sokka said. "Ked thinks I'm being arrogant, but do you know how many times I've had people walk up to me and tell me that they've actually gotten the courage to pursue their dreams, because they know that even though they aren't benders, they can still achieve something spectacular in the world? Often. Too often, it seems like. Sokka Baihu is seen as an example of what a non-bender is capable of, the heights a person can reach with nothing but intellect, endurance, and insight."

"Oh. You don't want to disappoint people," Ty Lee said.

Ked grit his teeth. He didn't like to admit it, but Sokka had a point. "So you just hide part of what you are from the world because it'd be inconvenient? That's cowardice, Sokka. You were the one who drove that into my head. You are _as you are_, or you have no place claiming to be who you are. How long have you been lying to these people? Since the Black Sun Invasion? Or was it even earlier, the Fall of Ba Sing Se?"

"Two years ago," Sokka said. "I might have been born a waterbender, but it wasn't until two years ago that anything became of it. Koh was right. I was the last born of the generation of waterbenders who never were, and I caught the tail end of it right across the face."

Ked and Ty Lee shared a confused glance. "What?" Ked asked.

"Frankly, when it comes to waterbending, I'm terrible," Sokka said, pushing some wooden utensils around the tabletop idly. "My sister is the greatest in the world, because waterbending is pretty much what she is. Me? I am a polymath. I'm a warrior, I'm a scholar, I'm an inventor. I'm a traveler, a husband, a friend, a brother. I am Water Tribe, but I'm also a bit Fire Nation now. And only after all of that, am I a waterbender. It doesn't mean much to me. It was never important to me. It remains that not-important."

"But waterbending is our unique cultural..."

"...martial artform, passed down through the generations, brought back from the brink of extinction, blah blah blah," Sokka said. He picked up a few things from where he was sitting and held them up. "You need a more physical demonstration of this. Ked: Imagine this table is no ability to waterbend whatsoever. The further you get from this table, the more powerful you are. Savvy?"

Ked nodded. Sokka moved to the door, opened it, then tossed a mug up to himself, before hurling it away from the shack, whereupon it vanished into the darkness. After he did so, he pointed out after it idly. "That was my sister."

"I don't see what this..." Ked began, but Sokka forestalled him, then dropped a wooden fork just outside the door.

"That is you," Sokka said. He then crossed the distance and laid the cracked spoon directly on the table. "And this is me."

"What?"

"My sister is the most powerful waterbender alive. I'm quite likely the weakest," Sokka said. He shrugged. "But since I don't particularly care, it doesn't bother me."

"Really. It doesn't bother you that you're practically crippled?" Sokka raised a brow at Ked's choice of words. Ked tweezed his brow and tried again. "You know what I mean."

"Waterbending. Doesn't. Matter. To. Me," Sokka stressed once again. "It's just another trick in a bag filled with dozens. If I can use it, fine. But I don't want anybody to know about it. If I could have, I'd have taken it to my grave."

"How many others know about this?" Ked asked tersely.

"Including the three of us in this cabin? Three and a half. One of those is me, and the half is the Dragon of the West's suspicion," Sokka sat down again. "And I'd like it to stay that way. Will that be a problem?"

"You're lying to people. How long have you been lying to her?" he pointed at Ty Lee, who just blinked, as though she weren't particularly paying attention.

"Do you mind that I didn't want to tell you about something I was terrible at?" Sokka asked. Ty Lee shook her head, her braid swinging as she did.

"It was still wrong," Ked said, his bluster beginning to fail him.

"I'm giving non-benders something they need," Sokka countered. He leaned forward, slipping back into their native tongue. "_Can you honestly say that you wouldn't do the same for the firebender out there? Can you honestly claim that you wouldn't lie, and cheat, and deface yourself for her? Because if you're anything like your parents, I think I know the answer to that._"

"_I am not my parents,_" Ked said.

"_You are,_" Sokka said with a sigh. "_We all are. Nobody is born in a vacuum, Ked_."

"_You don't want me to tell anybody,_" Ked said. Sokka nodded. "_And why shouldn't I?_"

"_Because despite my preconceptions of you, you're not an idiot. You know that this is the right thing to do._"

Ked stared at him for a long minute. "I still think you're an ass."

"That, I can work with," Sokka said with a smirk. Ty Lee glanced between them.

"Either of you going to tell me what all of this death-glaring and insulting is about? Because I don't want to have to break you two up again," she said, a comicly stern look on her face. Her arms crossed under her bosom, forcing it up and into center stage.

"Nothing," both Tribesmen said in unison. Sokka continued. "Just some old baggage that needed dealing with."

"So there won't be any more competitive willy-measuring?" Ty Lee asked. Sokka chortled a bit at that, and Ked outright gaped. "What?"

"Are you sure she's a National?"

"About as much as I'm a Tribesman," Sokka answered. He crossed his arms for a moment. With a shake of his head, he continued. "Look, Ked. I'm sorry for being such a psychopath around you. I honestly thought you were out to hurt one of my friends, and I also honestly believed that Azula was her same old psychotic self. I never considered for a moment that you might be trying to get some good out of a bad situation. And for that, I'm sorry."

"I didn't expect that from you," Ked said.

"Don't expect it from my sister. She's a bit hard headed," Sokka corrected. "But me? I always try to see things as they are. Azula's not trying to take over the world, she hasn't tried to kill me even once without me deserving it, and... well... she's not well, is she?"

"No," Ked said. He looked up to the magnanimous Tribesman. "I _still_ think you're an ass."

Sokka just grinned at that. It was right then that the door slammed open, a very annoyed looking Smellerbee glaring in. She had a death-glare on her face and she was soaking wet, like she'd taken a header into the creek. She held in one hand a cracked cup. "Alright. Which one of you dumbasses hit me in the head with this?" she demanded.

* * *

Ty Lee felt a moment of anxiety, watching her oldest friend staring at the fire. She still refused to come inside, and had been up all night. The sun was starting to crawl up over the horizon, and the day would soon break. And Ty Lee was paralyzed, as though somebody had used her own talent at Dim Mak against her. All because of the aura that Ty Lee could see swirling around Azula. A twisted grey, brighter than any color Ty Lee had seen around Azula for years despite the greyness. Her mind was whole. She was intact. But grey was the color of pain. Sometimes it flared, and a sensation of agony began to drift out, not a color, but a feeling like somebody had stripped out her fingernails with red hot pincers. It was terrible. And she didn't know what was causing it.

Quietly, she moved to the fallen log which Azula was sitting with her back to, staring at that fire. "I _am_ sorry," Azula said quietly. Almost confused, like she didn't believe she would say the words and mean it. "I've done things I regret. A lot of them I did to you."

Ty Lee reached into the green and gold bag which her husband had accidentally stolen years ago, and extracted a badly burnt book. Azula glanced over to it, as Ty Lee opened up the crumbling cover, to the singed pages. The letters on the page were inexpert, sloppy, childish. Considering Ty Lee had writ them when she was four, it was no surprise. She was actually the last one of the family to learn how to write. Always the poorest academically. But that didn't concern her right now. Instead, she began to run her finger along the columns of words, written in her childhood.

"I saw Azula again today. This time my sisters were there too. She still knew I was me," Ty Lee recited. She flipped forward a few pages. All of the sisters had been expected to keep diaries, a habit she had abandoned the instant she left for the circus. "Five guesses for Mom. Four for Dad. None of the guests got it right. Only Azula got it right," she said, pointing at a spoiled picture she'd doodled of the birthday party she could barely remember.

"I don't know what this is..." Azula said. Ty Lee flipped forward.

"Met a new girl from Azul today. Her name is Mai. I think she and Azula will get along great. Now I'll have two friends," she said. "Three exclamation points."

Azula swallowed, turning away. "I'm not that person anymore. Things have changed. I've changed."

"I know," Ty Lee said, closing the book. "I tried to pretend that everything could go back to the way it was before, but I know that it can't. I loved you, Azula. More than my own family, more than my home. I would have done anything for you."

Azula nodded, staring into her hands. "And then I asked about Kenta."

Ty Lee frowned for a moment, only vaguely being able to call up the memory. "Oh! Right! Him, the shy guy I knew from one of my classes. I'd almost forgotten about him," Ty Lee smiled, but it slipped a bit. Now that she was reminded, that was when Ty Lee knew that Azula wouldn't ever love her the way she thought she would. Ty Lee knew even young that she wasn't exactly heterosexual, not completely, because there were women who she found attractive. But there was only one who ever demanded more than a fantasy. Not homosexual; perhaps Azula-sexual. And Azula proved to be the same, respectively.

"He was so shy and awkward," Azula said quietly. "But he didn't ever lie to me. He wasn't after me for power. And he actually... liked me. I didn't even know that was possible."

"Whatever happened to him?" Ty Lee asked. Azula swallowed dryly, her grey aura flaring for a moment, her eyes pressed shut.

"Things were going... well. But two days after you left, he had an accident. He fell out of the window as he was leaving a secret meeting with me. He landed badly. I thought he was going to die," Azula said, her voice as flat and unemotive as somebody talking about an unremarkable sandwich she had once eaten. "But I got to him, I took his hand. And I didn't let him. I didn't let him die. I never knew Fire could be used to heal. I didn't remember Zuko, about how I brought him back when I was a child. It wasn't until that moment that I finally realized that there was so much more to firebending than Jeong Jeong or Ozai or anybody else ever told me. If I hadn't..." she glanced away, taking a shuddering breath. "Kenta was healed. He was fine, like nothing happened. But somebody had seen, and ran to Ozai. Soon after, he..." she hitched a bit, and started over. "A few weeks later, Ozai had Kenta killed in front of me. Because I deviated from his expectations. Because I used fire to heal instead of hurt. Because I showed a glimmer of independence from him."

Ty Lee felt like her stomach was trying to drop out of her feet. "Oh, my spirits, I'm so sorry," Ty Lee said, quickly pulling her friend into an embrace that the other woman looked like she desperately needed. For the first time that Ty Lee could remember since that afternoon on Kyoshi Island, Azula didn't flinch from it. "I never even thought about him after... I'm so sorry."

"After that, I knew I couldn't let anybody care about me. Because if they did, then they would die," Azula said. "Which is why I couldn't accept..." once again, she paused, trying to think of the right way to say it.

"It doesn't need to have the perfect words, Azula. Just say what you feel," Ty Lee urged.

Azula took a breath, and looked at her only from the corner of her eye. "That's why I didn't believe you during the Black Sun. Because if I did, then something horrible was going to happen to you. Because... everything I touch dies.

"I haven't died," Ty Lee pointed out.

"Yet."

"Oh, now that's not even fair," Ty Lee said.

"I know," Azula let out a bitter laugh. "Some friend I've been. I go so crazy that in order to try to prevent your being killed, I try to kill you. No wonder you both left me. I'm too dangerous to..."

"That's enough!" Ty Lee shouted. Most would be driven back, shocked, at her outburst, but Azula simply stopped mid sentence. "When I decided you were my best friend, it was all the good and all the bad. You don't need to keep pushing people away, Azula. I'm not going anywhere."

"That's what he says," Azula said quietly.

"Doctor Ked?" Azula didn't correct her, so it was probably right. "Not surprising. He _is_ in love with you."

"I know. He told me."

"You don't believe him, do you?"

"I don't know why I can't," Azula admitted, turning back to the fire. "Maybe, Ozai broke something in me so completely that I just can't ever believe it. Not anymore."

"I don't believe that," Ty Lee said. The firebender sighed.

"Why not?"

"Because you said you were sorry, and you meant it. You're not broken. You're just confused."

"I'm _tired_," Azula said.

Ty Lee nodded, watching as Azula's eyes slid closed an she leaned back against the log. Her breathing evened out, and she slipped into sleep just as the sun started to creep above the horizon. Ty Lee turned, and saw that her husband and the doctor were staying a discreet distance away. Ty Lee nimbly bounded up, not disturbing the fitfully sleeping firebender and giving her husband the sort of tackling hug she was known for, but this time, it wasn't for his benefit, but hers. She sobbed quietly into his coat, releasing all of the pain that she felt trying to talk to her friend. She wanted nothing more than everybody to be happy. And even though it finally felt like it was possible, it still hurt so much to see people she cared about in pain.

* * *

Chan closed the door to the outside world, the innermost door of the most innermost chamber in the Yuchiban House' royal dwellings. Only here was he relatively confident that nobody would be spying, overhearing, or eavesdropping. If only because there was nowhere that a person could do that. Not in this room. He slid his back down the broad pillars holding up the canopy of the bed, something the likes of his family might be able to afford if they liquidated everything they owned. Considering the monumental amount of gold in this room alone, it was astounding it could support itself under its own weight. "It's alright. We're alone," he said, giving a glance to the golden eyed firebender he was sharing the room with.

"Are you sure?" it was Azula's voice, but the nervousness, the tremor in her tone, the meekness of a woman fully aware that she was completely over her head and terrified of it, marked her as anything but. "You know how much those people scare me."

"You don't need to worry. Not about them," Chan said. He gave a winning grin to the woman, who nodded, and began to wipe away the makeup which was concealing her pallor, closer to Chan's Embiar coloration than Azula's shade. "You're doing a good job. Nobody suspects."

"Yeah, but how long am I supposed to keep this up? Until I go grey? Until they find a better impersonator? Agni's blood, if I knew this was what was waiting for me, I would have never left the Ember Island Players," she said with a sigh.

"Yui, you're putting too much emphasis on the negative. Did it ever occur to you to use this stolen authority to do something that you always wanted to, but never had the power to?" Chan asked, a smirk on his face. Yui shot him a look like he had lost his mind.

"I just don't want to rock the boat. If I do, I'll fall out, and I can't swim."

"Is that a metaphor?"

"I swim like a brick," Yui confirmed, unpinning her hair and letting it fall down her back. "I don't know how you can live with this sort of stress. I wasn't made for it. I know that."

Chan rose, arching his back. Officially, he was Azula's chosen bodyguard, which was in a way true, because he had guarded Azula's body, once upon a time. There was also a rumor circulating that she was having an affair with him. One he didn't discourage, because it gave a reason, salacious though it might be, for he to visit her during odd hours. "It's amazing what you get used to. A year ago, I thought I'd be serving at Betla for the rest of my tour, bored enough to pull out my own teeth for the entertainment value. Now, I'm sleeping in the best room of Yuchiban Palace. I'd call that upward mobility."

"I don't know where you get that confidence," Yui said.

"Just give it a bit of time. You might surprise yourself," he said. He moved closer, laying a hand on her smooth, unblemished shoulder. "Do you need anything before you turn in? I was going to make a run to the kitchen."

"Some milk would be nice," Yui said with a small smile. "You've always been so kind to me."

"It's my pleasure," he said with remarkable smoothness, and began to strut out of the room and down the hallways. Chuckles followed him as people drew the wrong conclusions. Let them think what they would. Chan was doing the right thing, and God damn, did it ever feel good to do it. He walked through hallways laden with gold inlaid into marble and limestone, in some places so ornate that the stone practically vanished under it, and he felt something stick to his heel. He scowled down, at a poster which had been torn down and discarded, now staring up at him. The Story of Wang Fire, Hero of the Fire Nation. The new play by Puon Tim. Nationalistic garbage, probably, if the previous works by Tim were any indicator.

He followed his nose to the kitchens, and pushed his way into them. Like every other part of the Yuchiban Palace, it was covered in gold. Ember once owned the greatest gold mines in the world, until they ran dry centuries ago. But still, their legacy remained, in the resplendent halls of the high and mighty. The kitchen only had a partial staff, true, but considering that nobody put too much pressure on them, quite unlike a 'real' royal crew, they were not in a state of constant, panicked industry. In fact, it took less than half a minute to flag down a server.

"The Fire Lord wants some milk before bed," he said. The man gave a smirk.

"Is that all she wants?"

"I don't appreciate your slander," Chan said, not even trying to seem serious.

"I'm sure you don't. Is it true what they say about her?"

"It depends on what they say," he deflected.

"That you and she..."

"You'd need to ask her. And she probably wouldn't tell you either. A lady does not kiss and tell," Chan said, taking the proffered milk jug. "But I can say she is an amazing woman."

The server, a short, dark eyed local, got a grin on his face at being part of the rumor mill, and went off to spread an exaggeration of that snippet wherever he went. And Chan had no intention to stop him. As long as people were looking at him, they wouldn't look at Yui. He didn't have a lot of experience protecting people, but that Tribesman was right, in that it was a good feeling.

A warm smirk on his face, he returned through the hallways. This time, he almost walked into a man in long, dark green robes. The man kept walking like Chan wasn't there, a light clacking of stone shoes against the floor as he, then another, then two more strode through the halls. Chan watched the Dai Li agents as they moved away, then shook his head with a tsk. He turned, and once again almost walked into somebody. This one was shorter than he, head shaven and bearing a faded scar on one cheek. His eyes were a very clear green.

"Chan of House Chan, son of Chan," the man said, his Huojian heavily accented in the tones of Ba Sing Se. A wry smirk came to the shorter man's face. "Your family had no lack of imagination when it came to naming, it is obvious."

"It's just a name," Chan said uneasily. "You don't sound like you're from around here. Who are you again?"

He already knew, but nobody knew that he did. He recognized the Dai Li, and he recognized their master as well. Long Feng's lips twitched into a bit of a scowl. "You are close to the Fire Lord, are you not?" he asked.

"Close enough," Chan said, uneasily.

"Tell me... Have you noticed anything odd about her?" Long Feng asked. Chan fought very hard not to swallow out of nervousness, not to start exuding an aura of flop-sweat.

"Well... what qualifies as odd?" Chan asked.

Long Feng leaned forward, and Chan leaned back. Long Feng's glare became positively incisive. Like Chan was being pared down to his bones, those bones ground and sifted, like he was being measured by every meaningful scale and a few that weren't. "I have my eye on you, firebender. Do not forget that."

Without another word, Long Feng walked after the agents who had taken up a silent position at the other end of the hall. When he caught up with them, the whole group turned a corner and vanished into the innards of the castle. Chan was still staring after them a long minute after they left, trying to get his heart rate under control. He could finally see why Ked was such a neurotic mess. Lying to these people was hard work.

He returned to the actress' room, but found that the bedroom was vacant. The door to the bathing room was open, though. "I've got your milk," Chan said loudly, so it would carry into the next room.

"Just leave it on the vanity," she said. Chan looked around the room. The what? There was a long moment of silence. "The thing with drawers and a mirror."

"Right," Chan said, setting down the jug of warm milk. Steam was rolling out of the door, and Chan properly kept his eyes away from it. He wasn't some Tribesman or pervert.

"I heard something interesting while you were gone," Yui said from the baths.

"What's that?"

"That you and I are 'going at it like animals'," she said evenly. Chan let out a chuckle at that.

"Well, it works to our purpose doesn't it?" Chan asked.

"I guess it does," she said. "But..."

"But what?" Chan asked.

"How about we make it more than a rumor?" she asked. Chan frowned a bit. "Aren't you going to turn around?"

"It wouldn't be proper."

"Turn around, Chan," she said. He did. And his jaw hit the floor when he saw her. When she sidled up toward him, she wasn't sex on wheels. She was sex on sex. A kind of seductive that he had quantifiable evidence that even the real Azula fell far short of. She gently placed her hands on his shoulders and smiled up at him. "You've been very good to me. I want you to know how appreciative I am. You could have held me over the fire, but instead you treat me like a Princess."

"I-I-I consider myself informed," Chan said awkwardly. And he wasn't sure why he was awkward; it wasn't like he hadn't done this before. Odd that a couple of weeks of not acting like an asshole would earn him this sort of 'appreciation'. Ked was right if he cared to paraphrase the Tribesman. Kindness was an aphrodisiac to women. But then he reminded himself that he was for all intents an purposes alone with what amounted to a naked Fire Lord. That was bound to put one off his game. "You don't need to..."

"Shhh," she said, biting her bottom lip and staring up at him. "I always get pushed around. Right now, I'm in charge, alright?" Chan nodded. "Good. 'Cause Yui is hungry."

Chan felt a laugh boil out of him. "My life, I give to my country," he recited the old school-yard anthem, as Yui began to herd him onto the bed. "With my hands, I fight for Fire Lord Az...Yui, and our forefathers who have fallen before us..."

That was about as far as he got.

* * *

Grand Ember was a large city. According to most sources the third largest in the world, it seemed to stretch both into the sky and the sea. The former was figuratively speaking, but the latter was more literal. The buildings of Grand Ember City didn't stop at the wharfs; in fact, the great docks which lead to the South Sea were much younger than the rest of the city, and were built on top of the bones of other buildings. Some of the more hardy specimens poked up at random out in the water, and it had taken considerable work to sledge the 'bay' enough for boats to safely traverse it, to enable the massive amount of trade that it dealt with.

This was, despite all seeming, the birthplace of a particular soldier. While Grand Ember was hailed by all of the Fire Nation as the most cosmopolitan of the entire Ember Archipelago, every city had its underclass, its unwanted, its unwashed masses scratching a living in the shadows. And Mongke was one such child. He didn't resent that upbringing. It made him strong. It _forced_ him to be strong. And that came in handy. Even if it was against frail, sallow children.

Mongke stared, his beefy arms crossed before an equally beefy chest, as the small, one-eyed man muttered angrily. "Is s/he a bit too much for you?" Mongke asked sarcastically, and in the man's own language to rub it in.

"I don't appreciate your sarcasm," Han said, shooting a blind glare with an empty eye socket. He turned to the boy once again. "Get on your feet. You are to be bathed."

"I don't know why I'm here," Mongke muttered, rolling his eyes.

"Because Jeong Jeong does not trust that we have Trama well in hand," Han said derisively. Mongke growled. "But Trama is if nothing else easily controlled. S/he is a potent weapon, and s/he will be utilized as we need him/her to."

"Really? 'Cause all I saw last time you unleashed that little bastard was random destruction until s/he crawled into a corner crying like a bitch," Mongke muttered. Han ignored the jibe, if he even heard it.

"Trama. Get up," Han said. He sighed, "I hoped it wouldn't come to this. So distasteful."

Mongke watched as Han moved closer to the child of indeterminate gender, looking very displeased. Likely because of the smell. There was an offensive odor about the child, one even Mongke felt a need to steer clear of. With a roll of the eye and a shake of the head, Han reached out and cuffed the child upside the head. "Trama! Listen to your orders!"

Trama spun with a high pitched shriek, fast as a flash, his/her hands clawing out. But the entire room was clad in metal for this exact purpose. As far as Mongke knew, only one person in the world could bend metal, and Trama wasn't her. At least, he assumed so, until the thick metal buckled upward, throwing Han against one of the walls. Another slash, like a mad-animal punch, and the wall buckled into the room, smacking the Dai Li officer to the ground painfully. Mongke was shocked, to say the least. But he was also a long-time soldier, so he didn't just stand there and gape like a moron. Instead, he calmly walked over to the child, who had clambered onto the Secretariat and was clawing at him with bare and cracked fingernails, and punched the child right in the back of the head. The child's wild scream cut off, slumping to the floor. Mongke just shook his head as Han got to his feet.

"I thought the kid couldn't bend metal," Mongke said.

"Trama cannot. But the stone under the floor and in the next room's wall..." Han muttered. He dusted himself off of some of the smut that Trama had left. "Perhaps we should relocate him to the Vault. I see that we will be needing more means of control for the weapon."

Mongke chuckled darkly. If this was the best Long Feng could manage, toppling him would be easier than Jeong Jeong thought possible. "You could say that again."

* * *

Ked still didn't know how Sokka had gotten used to flying on the sky bison. He kept finding himself clutching at the howdah as though releasing it for even an instant would spell certain doom. The Island of Gwynt vanished behind them, and they were well over the ocean by the time Azula even awoke from her deep slumber. They didn't really have a destination. Azula didn't want to go back to the Fire Nation. She hadn't said so in as many words, but when the topic got brought up, she looked positively ill. So Ty Lee brought up the idea of a jaunt throughout Whales, first, something to renew and reinvigorate them all. It wasn't like the world was waiting on them. There was already another Azula in Grand Ember. And the real Azula needed time to rest, time she was using to great effect. She seemed to have had nightmares again, and this time, even Ked's trick didn't help her. It wasn't quite as desperate as it had been, but he still felt so much a failure.

Thankfully, Ked was not alone in being airsick. Smellerbee seemed to be having equally as rough a time as he was, and the added horror of knowing that if she pulled herself over the rail to vomit, she would have an unrestricted view down to the tops of clouds. That did little to calm her mind nor stomach. The only thing she said when Ked offered to try to settle her stomach for her was that she hated the world and everybody in it, draped miserably across the rail of the howdah. Since Sokka was spending time with his wife on the beast's head, well outside the saddle – and how could any person in their right mind even consider leaving the saddle, Ked wondered – it made it as good as being alone with Azula.

And Azula didn't look so great. Her golden eyes were hooded, her countenance distracted, like she couldn't focus on anything around her. And he didn't like it because it was too close to how he had found her, when Zuko hired Ked to be her caretaker. He scooted around the saddle to her side, and she acknowledged him only with the slightest shift of her attention away from the seat of the howdah to him, then back down again. "Are you alright? It looked like you had nightmares again."

"I did," Azula said. "But I'm... better."

"You could have fooled me," Ked said.

"I'm not going back to the way I was. I was broken," Azula said evenly, quietly. "I broke myself. Because it was the only way to survive. To stay sane. After what he did to me, after what _they_ did to me, I knew I had to lock it away. I had to forget, at least for a while. Because if I didn't, I would have just snapped and collapsed."

Ked felt very uncomfortable about the way she was speaking. "You shouldn't repress your emotions, Azula. You must feel something about what happened. Outrage. Anger. Hatred, even. It's not healthy to hold it in. You aren't Whalesh, you don't need to..."

"I am well aware," Azula said, neutrally. "I'm not holding it in. I'm just... dealing with it. I can't afford to be weak," she forestalled him with a glance. "Be weak. Not act weak, not look weak. I'm not well. I know that. But I'm whole again. For the first time in years, I can control my entire mind at once, and I have all of my faculties. I just need to understand what happened. On a visceral level. An emotional one. And I'm doing that. My way."

"Do you need any help?" he asked. Azula looked back to him, a very odd look in her eyes.

"I figured something out," she said distantly. She flared her fingers, and a harsh snap sounded, tiny webs of lightning playing between her fingers. "Something he did to me. With nothing but lightning, he tore down every barrier I had built to forget, to protect my mind. Because lightning is the mind. I even know how he did it."

"What do you mean?"

"I know how to bend the lightning in your mind," she said, staring at him, eyes wide, desperate. "I can control anybody. Not taking over their body, but by making them think what I want them to. I could make anybody love me, forever. I would never have to fear them ever again. Because they would be desperately loyal to me, my creatures, for the duration of their lives."

"You don't want that," Ked said. Azula just kept staring at him, her fingers still crooked. "Because that will be proving right everything that Ozai ever said about you. You'd be proving to those people that you are the monster they wanted you to believe you were. Do you want them to be right?"

"But I would finally be _sure_," she said. "I'd finally know that they weren't lying to me. I'm so tired of being lied to."

"That's just the risk we all have to take if we want to be part of the world," Ked said, moving to her side, taking her clawed hand in his, and giving it a squeeze. She closed her eyes, glancing down at the floor again. "Sometimes, you have to just trust that there are people who will be there for you."

"How do you do it?"

"I had a lot of experience with it," Ked said. "I had my parents, I had my sister, I had my clan. You didn't have any of that, but you have your friends. You still have people who care about you."

She nodded. "Ty Lee. I treated her so badly."

"And she forgave you."

"She did," Azula said. She looked back up at him for a long moment. A conflicted look on her face. "She's a better person than I am."

"You just need to rise above what Ozai wanted to turn you into. You're so much more than that. You just need to see it in yourself," Ked restated. He leaned back, staring ahead, with Azula at his side, ignoring for the moment the fact he was on a sky bison, flying so high above the ocean that a fall would be certain death, after a drop long enough to drive one mad from terror first.

"Ked," she said. He grunted his acknowledgement. He then flailed slightly as she quickly pulled him close, her hands grabbing the sides of his head. But unlike the exchange in Betla before her brutalization, it was not erotic, charged, and furious, an invasion of the Water Tribesman by the Fire National. This was quiet, gentle. Almost chaste. When it was over, she pulled back, her eyes locked on his. "Thank you. For staying."

"Now I'm confused," Ked said. "Happy, but confused."

Azula nodded, and fell back into silence. And Ked felt no desire to interrupt her whatsoever. He just sat beside her, holding her hand, hoping he was being some sort of comfort to the royal, for she needed much of it.

* * *

Iroh wiped his hands on his apron, leaving the tea to waft up and remind him of another wonderful brew which now moved out into the front room of the Jade Dragon Tea Shop. He was the Dragon of the West, until recently, the last man to conquer a Dragon in the modern age. Of course, he hadn't actually killed the dragon. And Zuko was now more of a Dragon than Iroh was; the Dragon of the North. But it was a long time since he was the General who had fought to bring this city into Fire Nation hands. In fact, it was much more recently that he'd fought to free it, return it to its people. From war, Iroh had retired. He knew with utter certainty that he would never again fight in war. The visions he guided his life by had demanded a heavy cost, but their worth was beyond what he had anticipated, even in his hasty, impetuous youth when he had made the bargain. He just hoped that Sokka had heeded his instructions to the letter. He had high hopes for his niece, and he didn't want to see her hurt.

A whistle brought the old man back to task at hand, removing another kettle from the fire, his raspy voice humming a pleasant song as he poured the hot water into a kettle, and took it and a tray into the side room. Not missing a beat, the young lad who his previous assistant had hired to replace her moved into the void he left. Jin was now running her own shop, in Grand Ember. He hoped she was doing well, especially considering the climate; of course, her tea was _almost_ as good as Iroh's, so they might be willing to overlook her outsider status. He pushed the door to the back room open with his rump and spun into the room, and the sole guest smiled up, a tired expression on his face.

"Ah, there's what I've been looking for," he said, gratefully accepting a cup of fresh tea from Iroh, before the old man sat down next to him. He ran fingers along his short black hair before taking a careful sip. "You wouldn't believe how long I've been waiting for this."

"I'm guessing a day?" Iroh asked. The guest let out a care-free laugh. That was one of the many things Iroh respected about the young man. He was willing to let loose once and a while for the sake of his sanity. It was a skill he would have to teach Iroh's 'son', the Fire Lord. In truth, Iroh knew fully well that he was not Zuko's biological father, but it was an artifact of Fire Nation law that if two brothers ever disputed over the parentage of a child, the older was always assumed to be the valid claimant. And Zuko deserved better of a father than Ozai.

"Every day feels like an eternity," the man complained lightly. "Ever since Bumi... died... they can't seem to agree on anything."

"But you still have a duty, and you will not turn aside of it."

"Of course not," Aang said, drinking the tea with a long pull. "I am the Avatar, after all."

Iroh knew that he was taking a gargantuan risk, not telling the young man about Iroh's niece. He knew that if the young Avatar got involved in the War of Flames, at least, if too soon, it would consume him utterly, long before the next Avatar was due to be born. Iroh was running out of visions of the future, so he had to understand what each one meant with very discrete clarity. "They will see reason. Somehow," Iroh said. "I just have that feeling."

"I wish I had your optimism," Aang said with a sigh. "It's like trying to herd cactus-blasted lemurs."

"Of course it is, Twinkletoes," a woman's voice interrupted, and while Iroh's reaction was a mere raising of an eyebrow, Aang jumped to his feet, upsetting the tray. Only Iroh's quick hands caught the kettle before it smashed on the floor. Striding into the back room like she owned the place – which, considering the funding she put forth to rebuild this tea-house after the Liberation, was somewhat true – was the blind earthbender, Toph Beifong. "These damned nobles don't have any idea what to do with themselves now that the Fire Nation isn't breathing down their necks, so they turn on each other. Bunch of brain-dead idiots, if you ask me."

"Toph! You're back!" Aang said, running forward to embrace the tiny woman, but she stiff-armed him in the chest, knocking him onto his back. She had a grin on her face though.

"Of course I am. Do you really think I'd just leave you to get torn apart by these animals? Without me to stand in the corner and laugh at you? You must be out of your mind."

Aang hadn't stopped grinning, though. "It's great to see you again. How's your little boy?"

"Colic-y." She answered. She moved to the seat Aang vacated, put her bare, dirty feet up on the table, and held out a hand. "Tea?"

"Of course, Missus Beifong," Iroh said. "What brings you back to Ba Sing Se?"

"I had something of an epiphany," Toph said. Iroh raised a brow at that. He wondered if that epiphany might have something to do with rumors of blue fire outside Chuo Yan. If it might have something to do with a certain lost daughter of Fire. But he didn't say, because Aang needed to not know. Not now, at least. "Twinkletoes is doin' his best, and I respect that, but all things considered, ya still ain't an earthbender, so you don't know what your doin' with these idiots."

"What do you mean?"

"They're a bunch of rock-heads, talking to them won't get anything done," Toph said. She suddenly grinned. "But that makes it lucky that I came back."

"Why?"

"I think it's time that I became Earth King."

"You mean Earth Queen?" Aang asked. Toph scowled.

"I meant what I said, damn it." Iroh stifled a chuckle. This was going to be either glorious, or devastating. And Iroh had faith. Not in visions, this time. He had faith in Toph.

* * *

_And finally the Avatar reappears. The next chapter is fun. Leave a review._


	13. City of Walls and Secrets

**Back on schedule. No matter what. God, I shouldn't say that. That's just asking for trouble.**

**To answer questions: Azula overstated herself a bit. She knows that it's possible to rewrite minds. Lacking practice, she wouldn't be able to do it with any effectiveness, and trust me, the way she is right now, she's not practicing it. And as for the Dragon, I can actually go right back to Canon on this. Post Sozin, if you 'slay' a dragon, you get the title 'Dragon'. Iroh's was supposedly the last, leading into the twilight of the draconic race. Thus, he was the Dragon of the West. While the Dragon of the East would have been appropriate for Zuko, he is more remembered for his exploits in the North Pole and Ba Sing Se. That, and the Dragon of the East is an old Embiar hero, so like Gretsky's 99, the title has been retired. Recall how, in Book 2, Zuko's proferred mask was not blue, but green-and-red? He never gained a reputation as 'The Blue Spirit'. So somebody else did. Ontological inertia, and all that. Anyway, the Blue Spirit that Azula's impecable timing offed could have been just about anybody.**

**Even, perhaps, an aspiring Earth Rumble contestant who had the good sense not to pick a fight with Toph when the choice presented itself.**

**Oddly, and anybody who actually enjoys this work might find this hilarious, I found out I've recently been classified as 'everything that's wrong with Avatar fanfiction'. Judging from the wary reviews that I see from time to time, there's a chance that he's keeping an eye on me. But I don't let that bother me. I have a story to tell. I've just reached writing the crisis point in Bi's last arc during Hope, so there isn't long left. And yes, I solemnly vow that if I can finish the narrative, I'll go to two updates a week. It's just that I'm a bit stretched at the moment. As for other plot relevant questions: Read on. Some of them will be answered now, others in good time.**

* * *

The dead of night was silent, even in the largest palace on the face of the planet. It was often said of Ba Sing Se, that if mankind ever found itself shrugging off the surly bounds of gravity and left the orbit of the planet, the great city would still be visible to the naked eye even from the vantage of the heavens themselves. Ba Sing Se was the largest city in the world, and still growing; only sustainable because of the earthbenders inside its walls, producing far more food than any normal patch of land should be capable of by virtue of their skill. Millions lived their lives without ever glancing beyond the outer walls.

That had almost been their downfall. She didn't like thinking about these sorts of things. They weren't her style. Leave politics to people like Sparky and Twinkletoes. She was a fighter, first. She had been a fighter in her previous two lifetimes, the greatest earthbender of those respective generations. But as she walked the vacant, unlit throne-room of the Earth King, her bare feet raising not so much as a whisper, she 'looked' around, feeling every crack and crevasse of the chamber, drawing in the sensorum through her feet and into her mind. It wasn't sight, but it was good enough. Right now, her blindness was actually a benefit; in the blackness, she could see where no other could.

She began to move forward, the only sound the slight whisk of her divided, knee length skirt brushing against itself. She was not a politician, and yet here she was. She'd kept as far away from rulership as she could, but every time she looked back to her homeland in the East, it just kept getting worse. And without Bumi to keep the nobility in line, the entire continent was fracturing into a state of all out warfare. She was not going to see her home consumed in a conflagration which raged between powers which would crush them underfoot. Shr-Wa was not a powerful kingdom, but it was surrounded by those that were. If any side started rattling their swords, the blood would be spilled in Shr-Wa.

It was a brazen thing she considered, almost mad. And the more she thought about it, the less 'almost' it seemed. But the alternatives were all suck covered suck, braised in suck with a sprinkling of suck on top of them for the extra suck flavor. And Toph Beifong was not about to roll over for a bunch of overfed, under-worked, overprivileged pricks. If she had useful eyes, she would have looked up to behold the electrum badger mole, its massive form hunched forward over the throne, its massive claws forming something of a canopy for the stone seat. How long had it been since the Earth King had been anything but a figurehead? Likely since Kyoshi's day. And that was too long.

Toph Beifong was going to do something drastic.

She ascended the short distance, standing before the throne itself. She glanced down and to the side, 'looking at' the spot where Kuei's corpse had been dumped years ago. There wasn't anything there anymore, but it was an impression burned into her memory. The last Earth King of the Shen Dynasty, and she was there when it ended. But that was going to change. With a breath to steady herself – because this actually shook her a bit, was something even she thought was something verboten, something illicit – she stepped forward once more. She turned, her blind eyes sweeping across the broad chamber. She could feel it all. It was like this chamber had been built specifically with her unusual senses in mind. She wagered if it were one whit bigger, she wouldn't be able to see its entirety from here, but here it was. With a nervous exhale, she tipped herself back.

She draped her leg over one arm of the throne, sprawling back in the seat which had decided the fate of the great city since its foundation almost three thousand years ago. The only older city in the world was Omashu, but that was pretty much as old as time. Her body was rock hard, as though somehow the combined vengeance of more than fifty generations of Earth Kings would come up and smite her for daring to occupy this seat. But nothing happened, and a smirk began to spread across her face. She shifted into something more of a regal pose, her hands on the arms of the chair, her back straight, the smirk growing into a grin.

"Yeah, I could get used to this," Toph Beifong said, as a plan began to gestate in her mind.

* * *

**Chapter 13: City of Walls and Secrets**

* * *

It was days like this one which made Aang very, very glad that he'd learned how to let go of his anger. Ironically, it was anger which had barred his way to the Avatar State during that last year of the Weary War; mostly, it was ironic because he felt like he was about a twitch away from a rampage. And an Avatar State rampage was not a spectacle anybody would want to witness. The last time an Avatar _really_ threw a hissy-fit, Fire Lord Sozin needed to build a new palace. Aang glared, his grey eyes flat and his teeth grinding loudly enough that the representative sitting next to him was growing increasingly nervous.

"I'm going to have to cut you off right there," Aang interrupted the grey haired blowhard. A very familiar blowhard, one he thought he wouldn't have to deal with again. But he was the Avatar, after all, and these things tended to happen. "What you're talking about is annexation and taxation of minor kingdoms. And since they're all sovereign entities, you have no authority to do that save military conquest, and let me tell you, that's not going to happen."

"I was saying nothing of the sort," the Chancellor said hastily. "We're simply asking that every member of the Earth Kingdoms do their part in the rebuilding of our shattered nation."

Aang glared some more. "And how exactly did Wu Hai suffer again? As I recall, you worked _with_ the Fire Nation for two decades."

"The politics of the East are complex," one of the Chancellor's aides prompted. "The War was not a constant meat-grinder of conflict and death; there were long stretches where Fire Nation and East Continent were in a state of relative, if not de facto peace. It is unwise to level a charge of collaboration considering the difficult realities of..."

Aang let out a groan, flopping back in his seat. This was actually a productive day, sadly enough. And only then because he'd managed to get all five of the major remaining Kingdoms at the table at the same time. There was the Chancellor; two other Kings whom he'd never met before; the representative of Burning Rock, obviously trying to play all sides of the civil wars, be they burning hot or merely nascent, to their best advantage; and there was Queen Bei of Three Hills. And he trusted them collectively as far as Toph could spit.

Truth be told, he should have seen this coming. The Avatar was supposed to be the world's best mediator, as well as the bridge between worlds, and sole bender of all four elements. Little did anybody know that there were at least five elements, one of which only came up every couple centuries or so. If Aang wanted to, he could turn a waterbender into a firebender, make a firebender an airbender, and make a nobody a bender almost as strong as he was. He almost missed those halcyon days where his enemies merely tried to kill him, instead of this... torturous death of ten thousand cuts.

Aang's attention was dragged out of his glum musings when the door to the room slammed open. When he actually leaned around the edge of his chair, he noticed no, it wasn't the door which had opened, but a significant portion of the wall, which now lay as light scree on the floor. The various royals and representatives all looked agog at the short, murky-eyed woman who strutted into the chamber like she owned the room. Toph patted some dust off of her hands, still showing faded scars after all these years. She had a smirk on her face. "So, who decided to carve up the East without telling me?"

"What is she doing here?" the Chancellor demanded, pointing a bony, liver-spotted hand at the blind earthbender.

"Representative of the people of the Earth Kingdoms," Toph said. "And since they are part of the East Continent, I get a seat at the table," Toph gestured brusquely, and the chairs holding Queen Bei and the Burning Rock rep got shoved aside somewhat. A second gesture, and a high backed, relatively nice stone chair jumped up out of the ground, forming to Toph, and looking nothing less than a throne in the middle of the table.

"What is the meaning of this?" Bei asked.

"Are you deaf or something?" Toph asked. The Chancellor pointed then at Aang.

"This is some sort of trick, isn't it? You're trying to install your agent into our leadership."

"You think he has that sort of political savvy?" Toph asked with a laugh. "You really don't know too much about Twinkletoes, do you."

"Twinkletoes?" King Soon asked.

"You have no place here. This is a place for royalty, and their representatives," Bei said haughtily. Toph turned to her, a frown on her face.

"And you claim to be royalty?" Toph asked.

"Of course, I can trace my linage back a dozen generations of kings of Three Hills," Bei said.

"You're lying," Toph said idly.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Maybe when you stop laying out a line of shit," Toph dismissed. Bei went red in the face. "And you," she said, pointing to Ambassador Ouzen Azdi of Burning Rock, "don't have any place here either, since you're officially Fire Nation territory. Yeah, Fire Nation in the East Contintent, cry me a river. You've got problems, take them up with the Fire Lord and stop wasting Aang's time."

"Do your duty, Avatar, and control this woman!" The Chancellor shouted, his voice no more reedy now than when last Aang had heard it.

"I'm afraid I can't," Aang said, lounging in his chair. "Considering she hasn't done anything wrong."

"You're showing dangerous nepotism if you invited her here," Bei said darkly, thumbing aside a lock of slightly grey hair.

"He didn't invite me specifically. Just 'anybody who had the interests of the East Continent in mind'. Which leaves me scratching my head as to what you five idiots are doing here."

"I've had just about enough of this. Between the slander and the insults, I feel as though I've lost a year to my life," Bei said, storming away. Aang rolled his eyes as the rest of the table dissolved into loud argumentation, and finally a fist-fight between the two Kings broken up by their bodyguards and the two of them were dragged away. And through it all, Toph grinned like a madwoman. By the time the whole scene had settled, only a few minutes had passed, and Aang's head was pressed down on the surface of the stone desk they had gathered at, as though raising it would require more energy than his body had access to.

"That went well," Toph said.

"Do you have any idea how hard it was to get those five into the room at the same time?" Aang asked quietly, his face still to the desk. "It took a week to get those kings to stop shaking swords at each other every time they passed each other in the courtyard. You probably just set back talks by months!"

"Yeah, don't be such a big baby. They're a bunch of douchebags anyway, and you're better off without 'em."

"I'm very close to losing my temper here, Toph."

"Ooooh, I'm so scared," Toph said. "Besides, I wasn't joking when I said I was going to take that throne. I just felt a need to scope the competition. Gotta say, I'm not impressed."

"Yeah, well, those five control a military between them almost as large as the Fire Nation's was during the War," Aang pointed out.

"Trifling problems," Toph dismissed, pounding her fist down on the table. Her throne sank back down into the stone underfoot as she did. She shot Aang a smirk. "I figure if Azula can take over Ba Sing Se in three days, with the notable handicap of being a crazy bitch, then if I can't do the same, then I'm some sort of joke," the grin grew a bit dark. "And that'll be when flying boars swim."

* * *

She had forgotten how slowly time passed when she wasn't going somewhere or doing something. Toph had gotten extremely used to being on the move, almost a Wind Nomad herself. But in her bones, and in her soul, she was East Continent, and that meant she was also at least a little bit Earth Kingdom. In the East, you hold your ground against the storm, and rebuild after it leaves. She'd been running away from her problems and her responsibilities long enough; the current batch of politicians who had a legitimate shot at the throne were a bunch of panty-waist idiots, more West than East in their brains. They were willing to use their words like a knife, slicing and severing, slipping through the little gaps in a man's conversation and bleeding somebody dry like an Azuli butcher.

What the East needed was the political equivalent to a blunt instrument. Toph 'looked around', purely a cosmetic gesture considering she could already see everybody who had packed into the Cool Old Guy's tea house. They were of many stripes and titles, few of them impressive. Of Dukes, there were a sprinkle; Earls outnumbered those two to one. Barons, on the other hand, packed the tables until there was standing room only. It had taken weeks of work to get these people brought in, and there were still others who had sent regretful declines, their duties precluding a trip to Ba Sing Se.

"_Is this all of them?_" Toph asked the old man in his own language.

"_As many as could come,_" Iroh said evenly. "_I must admit, I find it startling to have so many customers in the dead of night._"

"_What you call customers, I call my resistance,_" Toph said. The noise in the tea-shop was a buzz of conversations in the many dialects which made up the Tianxia umbrella-language. There was good reason why many Easterners spoke so many different languages: neighbors' Tianxia might be as different as Yqanuac to Huojian, so the people were taught as many dialects as possible growing up. Usually, children had five to seven dialects by the time they started writing; Toph, being descended from the insanely rich, had fifteen, plus a working knowledge of Whalesh and fluency in Huojian. So when she let out a high, piercing whistle, she was speaking everybody's language and dragging their attention from each other and to herself.

"Y'all probably know who I am," Toph aid. "And that's good, because it keeps me from having to waste time with introductions. You've got your reasons for being here. You probably chafe, caught between larger neighbors. You're probably denied good farmland because somebody with a few thousand more soldiers than you has shouldered you out. You're poor, because somebody else is 'operating' mines inside your borders. You're kicked, spit on, and shit on, because you're little, and the East is big."

"That's the way it always is," the sole king muttered from the back of the room. A lot of glares were directed at him, as though he didn't belong just because he had a higher station relative to their own. "Man is a wolf-bat to man, and in the East, the countries embody that. The weak struggle and scrape, and the strong eat them."

"And that's just the way you like it, isn't it?" a representative from some republic on the edge of Si Wong snarked. "You wouldn't want us forgetting our place, now would you?"

"Excuse me?" he said, scratching at his long, bushy grey beard. "Are you blaming me for what Three Hills did to you? Despite the fact that we're practically on opposite sides of the Divide?"

"It might not have been you, but it was another one like you," the Si Wongi muttered darkly, glaring at the king with obvious disgust in her nearly-black eyes.

"Oi! Eyes up here!" Toph called. "I didn't invite anybody here that I didn't want here. Every one of you has suffered at the hands of the bullies of the East," she pointed at King Gong, "Omashu included."

"It might be nice if you all remembered that two months ago, I was making sandwiches to earn my silver," Gong said, fidgeting in his bulky cape. "I didn't ask to be King. It was just Bumi's sick joke."

"Yeah, he did have a weird sense of humor," the baron of neighboring Changsu said. "He locked me in a room for four days with the Prelate of Heng Hun. I thought he'd gone nuts, but he just wanted me and her to hit it off. I ended up marrying her."

"A genuinely weird man," an agreement sounded, and the leaders of the tiny nations all joined in agreement; Gong nodded, vindicated.

"Alright, Omashu can stay. They've suffered more during the War than quite a few places." Baron Dahn said. "What are we here for? You told us you have some big plan, but you didn't indicate much on the invitation, and I'm a _very_ long way from home."

"Please, you got here by sky bison, just like I did," another complained. Dahn seemed to blush, making an attempt at indignation which was utterly transparent, especially to somebody like Toph. It was not surprising, since Dahn was all of seventeen years old. "But he's got a point. What is so important that it can only be discussed in person?"

"I didn't send messages because there's a chance that the Dai Li are still listening in," Toph said. Some people began muttering discontentedly. "And believe me, living like I have, you'd grow a healthy suspicion of those assholes, too. I could beat around the bush with this, but that's not the way an Easterner does things. Gentlemen, Ladies, and..." she 'looked' back at a fop of gender which even Toph found indeterminate, "...whatever the hell you are, I intend be the next Earth King. And I believe you're all the road to that happening."

There was silence, only punctuated by a cough which seemed to come out of nowhere.

"They seem suspicious," Iroh offered.

"Obviously," Toph muttered. She pointed again. "Question in the back?"

"Wouldn't you be Earth _Queen_?" Dahn asked.

"Only if I dressed like him/her/it," she said, pointing at the confusing one sitting at one of the side-tables. "Any _real_ questions?"

"One," King Gong prompted. "Are you out of your mind? Any one of the real contenders for the next Dynasty could crush any one of us like an insect."

Toph had been prepared for that question. Even as he was asking it, she reached behind the counter, and pulled out a bag. Unlike all others around it, this was one was rough burlap and filled with gravel, rather than silk, and filled with tea leaves. All went silent as she finished dumping a heap of flint, chert, and granite onto the countertop. "You're all right. If any one of you stands up against the larger kingdoms, you'd get swatted down like a vulture wasp by a pissed off Avatar," she said, bending up one tiny chip of stone and casting it away from her. It zinged over the shoulders of the assembled nobles, bouncing off of the closed doors pathetically. "And you wouldn't achieve much of anything. But there's one thing that you all seem to overlook pretty consistently. Namely, that there's a goddamned lot of you," she bent again, this time, lifting the entire load of gravel into the air. She then flexed her hands in, and the gravel began to scrape and grind, being forced inward and smashed into itself until it was no more gravel, but rather a sort of metamorphic rock. "Individually, you're weaksauce. Together, though? Different story."

Toph turned to Iroh briefly. "_I'll pay for the new door,_" she said.

"The new what?" Iroh asked. She answered him by casting out the ball of stone she had created at remarkable speed. His eyes went wide, and a number of people had to jump out of the way, as the stone smashed through the door, slamming it open and bursting part of it into splinters which scattered across the thoroughfare.

"Apart, you're about as useful as a drunken sky bison during a hurricane. Together, though, you're a power. They might each be able to take you on, but we've got something they don't; we can work together. They can't. They've proven that pretty effectively in how thoroughly they've screwed themselves and all of you over with the Weary War. _We_ are the Earth Kingdoms, not them. _We_ are the East Continent, not them. And it's time we showed them who really belongs on the Earth Throne."

"And why should that be you?" the Si Wongi delegate asked. Toph smirked.

"Because they're going to try to kill whoever makes for the prize. And I'm a lot tougher than all of you," she paused, 'looking' back at the one-eyed, one-legged, scar-covered Duke of East Gate. "With the possible exception of you."

"So you are going to take all of the risk, but how does this benefit us?"

Toph rolled her eyes, for what it was worth. "Gods, you people've got no damned imagination! What do you think happens when suddenly you aren't little and squishable anymore? You start getting stuff. Do I really need to spell it out for you?"

"Unification sounds awfully Western to me," Gong pointed out.

"Not unification. Coalition, mutually beneficial and equal."

"With you at the head," the Si Wongi said. Her heartrate picked up a bit. "This is the Avatar's plan, isn't it? Some further nepotism to put his old friends into positions of power. Because that just worked out so well in the West."

"Twinkletoes has nothing to do with this," Toph said. "He's just as skeptical as you are. But fine. Go it alone. But remember this one thing, while you're thinking this plan over: Do you think you stand a better chance at grabbing some prosperity alone and surrounded by enemies, or with an army of equally pissed off people at your back? Just ponder that for a little bit."

There was a moment of silence. "Is that your pitch?" Gong asked.

"Yup."

"Remarkably straightforward," Gong opined.

"That's the way I roll."

"I like it," Gong said, nodding to himself. He stopped, gave a glance around the room. "As King, I say Omashu will stand with Beifong."

From nearby, another spoke up. "The Coordinator of Gaoling will stand with Beifong."

Third, a voice Toph recognized, and even noted on her way in, but hadn't indicated in the slightest. Because anything else would have put an arrow into her foot before she'd said word one. Her mother stood. "Marchioness Gangtie of Shr-Wa will stand with Beifong," she said. And for the first time, her having never told anybody about Toph being so much as born was working to their shared benefit.

Others began to speak up, accepting a plan which now had motion. Like the earth, they obeyed inertia and momentum. Hard to get started, but once moving, almost impossible to stop. "_It would seem you are fomenting a revolution,_" Iroh offered easily, taking a drink of his tea.

"_Yup. I gotta say, that was a good plan,_" Toph said. Even without eyes, she could tell Iroh was grinning.

"_Well, it's not like I was going to let you fumble in the dark,_" Iroh said. There was a pause. "_Metaphorically, anyway. But still, don't be too hasty. This is only the beginning. Hostile eyes will now __fall upon you. I hope you are ready._"

Toph smirked, leaning back into a seat and kicking her feet up onto the nearest table. "Old Guy, I was born ready."

* * *

Queen Bi Bei carefully extricated herself from the bulky fur coat which had been provided at great expense. Well, technically, she had her servants extricate her; mostly, it was because that garment, however elegant, was a nightmare to don or remove without damaging either its integrity or its wearer. She held herself every inch of her royalty, which was part of the point. She knew who was pulling the strings. She knew the part she had to play. She looked down her nose at the commoners which scurried about, obsequious in her presence, hoping to curry favor through the utmost application of their tasks. She essentially ignored them.

"Your Majesty, King Soon is here to speak with you," one of her green and blue liveried servants spoke up when she had finally eschewed the bulky clothes which were proof against the chill of the coming winter in Ba Sing Se, and allowed herself to be draped with more flattering and appropriate evening attire. Bei smiled, regally. Soon was a decent enough person to work with, if more than a bit thick. She nodded to the servant, who opened the doors to her sitting room, and announced her arrival. She delicately took her place in the tall-backed chair, a thing akin to a throne itself, and folded her hands on her lap.

"I was hoping you were not snubbing me," Bei said. "You must be aware of the rabble-rousing which is going on under our noses. This has to stop."

"I'm well aware," Soon said, with a scowl and a hand run down his very long, black beard. "Kingship is the purview of those chosen by the gods. Only those with the divine right have any place claiming power. This 'Beifong' woman has no royalty in her blood. My genealogists have confirmed that beyond any doubt. Such a common slattern has no place amongst our courts."

"So you agree that she should be removed?"

"I said nothing so hasty," Soon answered. "But as long as she continues to see herself as our equal, she degrades us. We need to extricate her from the process of selecting the new Dynasty."

"That is exactly what I meant," Bei said. Soon raised a brow at her, sensing her switching gears, probably. Royalty were trained to have such affects of interrelation scrutinized to a hairsbreadth, and to let nothing slip by. Bei had to walk that line much finer than most. She had her own secrets to hide. "Beifong is a destabilizing influence. She needs to be dealt with quietly and with proper accord."

"She has achieved an unsettling amount in the last few weeks," Soon muttered. "I worry that if she continues at the pace she has, at gathering the smaller countries, she might gain a force equal to our own."

"That will not happen," Bei said. "Steps are being taken."

"I can only say that whatever you have planned, I must have no part in," Soon shook his head. "I keep my reputation by maintaining a certain distance from the less savory aspects of diplomatic relations. I will not sully myself with this. However, blood is thicker than water, and ours is thicker still. I will not see a commoner on the throne. Not in my lifetime."

"I thought you might see things this way," Bei said. "But on to other topics. We cannot weigh your entire visit with such dire affairs."

Bei made small talk, involved but ultimately meaningless, as she ran numbers in her head. She was chosen for this because of her keen mind, not for any other reason. He was expecting much of her, and she had delivered much. Setting the five real contenders for the Earth King at each others throats was a relatively easy process, but keeping them there? Not as easy as she would have hoped. And the addition of a sixth side, one she had no influence over whatsoever was a dangerous upset to the plans he had set out. She just hoped – and she was not a woman to place any faith in hope – that the events of the last few weeks were a flash in the pan, a flame which rose quickly and brightly, only to consume itself and die back down into darkness.

It was not too long later when Bei and Soon had made their pleasantries, she outlined his part to play, however obliquely, and bid him a courteous adieu. He left, no doubt thinking her firmly on his side. In truth, she was on a side which nobody was aware of, one which hinged on no one power rising above the others. Soon was a traditionalist. He would stand beside nobody but royal blood. But he was also loath to be swindled; he'd gone to war over less. Hu was simply making a grab for power, and woe betide any who stood in his way. He was easily controlled, but a dangerous enemy. Tong just wanted to be the big man on the hill again, and Ouzen Azdi was a staunch advocate for Burning Rock, but he was difficult to sway any way but that. Ouzen only had one reason to become Earth King, and it served her best to deny that.

Long Feng demanded much. Luckily, she had been doing this for a long time. She had a lot of skill manipulating people.

Bei, or rather, the woman who had taken the identity of the long dead Princess Bi Bei, moved into her own private rooms to finish penning the report which she would send to her distant master. A war built purely for the purposes of misdirection: that was so Dai Li that it practically oozed. Of course, the Grand Secretariat had other plans, longer plans, but so did everybody, it seemed. She had just sat down and reached over those heathenish 'pens' to a proper calligraphic brush when she noticed something out of place in the room. A smell.

The smell of fine tea.

She turned, her brush a hair from touching paper, and beheld an old man sitting quietly to one side. He had a kettle of tea sitting beside him, a cup in his hand. It took an instant, no more, to recognize the once-prince of the Fire Nation, the Dragon of the West. The old man glanced at her with a remarkably benign look on his face. She turned, preparing to shout, but he cleared his throat. "I wouldn't do that if I were you," Iroh said. Bei turned back, staring at the old man.

"What are you doing here, outsider?" Bei demanded. "You have no place in the presence of royalty."

"I could say much the same thing about you," Iroh said, pointing with his teacup. "You do not belong in that seat, or have rights to those clothes."

"That is a heady charge you make, National," Bei said, rising to her feet. Iroh remained sitting, sipping gently at his tea. "You will leave, or I will have you cast out of this palace as..."

"What is your real name?" Iroh asked.

"I am Queen Bi Bei, only surviving child of Jiang Bei, King of Three Hills," she answered with all the dignity and authority the title required. And lies, every word of it.

"We both know that isn't the truth," Iroh said. "I know you are not who you claim to be. And that means that you must be acting on behalf of somebody else, because it would require a lot of legwork to set you up as the long-vanished princess of the recently destroyed nation."

"I am who I say I am. You have no proof to the alternative."

"Proof? What use is there for proof in this game?" Iroh asked. He finished his cup of tea, so poured another. "We both know it is not what is true, but what can be made believed. You are trying to foment a civil war. I want to know why."

"I have nothing to say to you," Bei said.

"Perhaps I was hasty to barge in here without announcing myself," Iroh admitted, "but I was told I had a two month wait on appointment. I don't feel like waiting that long. Who is your master, counterfeit?"

Bei smiled at him, condescending. "You can prove nothing. You have no voice, not here. In Ba Sing Se, you aren't the Dragon of the West. You aren't the general, the once-prince, or war hero. You're just a tea-seller. And you hold nobody's ear."

"I hold the Avatar's," Iroh said. Bei scowled. A century without that man's interference, and only now does the mythical demigod return to vex those plans of mere mortals. "But that is beside the point. He is rightly hesitant to get in these sorts of affairs. He is a man of gentle ways and optimistic outlooks. Were he Kyoshi, or worse, Yangchen, we would not be having this conversation, because he would have smashed you into dust months ago."

"I do not take threats kindly, old man," she said.

Iroh scowled up at her, a dark look in his golden eyes. "That was not a threat, but this is. You will bow out of this melee. You will stop this endless tampering with the politics of the East. Because if you don't, I swear, I will bring down your house of lies and show the world who you really are."

"Like you even could."

Iroh smiled grimly. "I could do it in five words," he promised.

Bei glared at him. "Get out."

"Very well. But I will leave the tea behind, as my gift to Three Hills," Iroh rose and moved quietly to her door. At the threshold, he turned with a bit of a smile. "I once had many fond memories of Three Hills. It would be a shame if it needed to fall again."

After he left, Bei looked down at the sheet of paper under the brush. Ink, dripping from the bristles, had spattered over the page, ruining what work had already been done, and making a figure which looked somewhat like a laughing skull on the page. This was a complication she did not need. As dangerous as Beifong was to the delicate balance she had created at Long Feng's behest, someone like the Dragon of the West on her side made her much more dangerous. If the Avatar were to become involved...

She sat down, drawing out a new sheet, and started a new report. She would have to act more quickly than she had anticipated. And she dreaded that, because that meant that she was going to make mistakes. She hated making mistakes. It was sloppy. Long Feng didn't brook sloppiness. She paused in a character, a thought occurring to her. Maybe this required a certain amount of sloppiness. She was killing a commoner after all. Still, even sloppy plans needed some preparation. It practically formulated itself in her head. The only thing left to wonder about was how long it would take to clean the blind woman's blood off the palace floors.

* * *

Ursa was alone.

Tonight at least, Jee wasn't here. There were servants milling about in the rest of the palace, but she felt very much cut off from everything that she'd ever cared about. So she took to walking. She wasn't normally an insomniac; her outlook gave her a very clear conscience, if one could be said to possess such a thing. With a true war erupting in the West, Jee had nowhere to go; returning to Grand Fire would be suicide, with so much of Ember in the way. So he remained, a trustworthy companion in a world where so few ever were.

Ursa was not a woman who trusted frequently.

She was walking down the path which led to the inner chamber. The first case she passed was empty. Iroh had taken the doll, the last such toy anybody dared give Azula, to suit her purposes. There was another person who Ursa trusted, one of a number so small she could count them all on one hand. But those few she trusted, she trusted deeply. He had spelled out with exquisite detail what would happen if Ursa tried to reconnect with her son before the proper time. He wouldn't live to meet her. She hadn't the first clue how Ozai managed to levy such a curse upon her, but she could not violate it. Which meant she had to work around it. There was such a path; no curse was ever inescapable. Destiny lay in mortal hands, after all. But it was convoluted, and painful. Somehow, Ursa had to find her daughter. It was not an onerous task, since she missed her daughter no less dearly than she missed her son, but it _was_ a difficult one.

Even thinking about Azula was painful. She'd done the best she could, but when she left, Azula was so angry. Like she hated Ursa. That was Ursa's failure; she couldn't make Azula understand how much she loved her.

The first occupied plinth was her comb. It was one of the few things she managed to bring away with her when she fled the Fire Nation. It was odd how she held on to it after all these years, despite everything else she'd had slowly being lost, stolen, or bartered away for food or lodgings. This one little piece of home was hers, and she would not abandon it. Even if she could never return. Even if Iroh was wrong and she was trapped here in this place forever. She was Fire Nation, once. Now, she wasn't really sure what she was.

She kept walking. The striped boots of the Water Tribe savage. She caught herself, a mild chastisement. They weren't savages. In fact, they proved much more helpful to her than the more 'civilized' people she had spent much of her life around. They were a gift to her, when she solved a little problem for them up in Pulse. They were an object lesson that the world was more complicated than she believed, and that its people would surprise her.

The next plinth, and an old dress she'd worn early on, after being robbed of practically everything, even the clothes on her back. That was the last time she allowed them to walk on her. When the same thugs came back around looking for something more of her, she burnt them to ashes. She had been in a state of despair before, unable to do much beyond walk and eat and sleep. But afterwords, there was an anger inside her. One she felt no need nor compunction to snuff. That was when she decided to stop being destiny's victim. She would find a way home. Any way. Because one _had_ to exist somewhere.

She stopped at the door, gazing out through her silver mask, at the people who were going about the daily business of keeping up the palace at Kad Deid. This was just a means to an end for her. Yes, Rhodri, the grandiosely titled Emperor Zeruel II was absolutely enamored with her for years, and to her credit, she did make the last few years of his life the happiest he ever had. But she hadn't intended to. She was using him because she needed to be in a position of power. Her marriage into the royal family of Whales was a calculated move, and she had to work tirelessly for years to supplant all of the default heirs, so that power would remain in her hands. Because she was well aware that if she ever wanted to see her family again, she was going to need it.

She pondered briefly, behind that impassive silver face, if that made her something of a monster? To use a man's heart in such a callous way. Ozai once said that the ends can justify any means. Could the means then, she wondered, be used to justify the ends? Yes, she was in power despite having no real precedent allowing her to, of a nation not her own, but the way she did that was by making people happy, healthy, and strong. What man would call a monster somebody who fought to make the lives of people better?

She sighed, turning away from the subjects below. Rhodri was a good man, but despite he being utterly in love with her, he never could make her feel loved. She _could _blame her parents for leaving her emotionally neutered, but she was well aware that the blame fell on only one set of shoulders: her own. She was raised to grasp power. It wasn't until she had children that she began to question if that was what _she_ wanted. And that's when things fell apart in the Fire Nation. She walked back into her chambers, consumed in her memories.

The door was open. She realized that just in time to turn and see a knife flashing toward her face. For once, she was quite glad for the metal mask she wore, because the blade slid along it rather than gouging into her face. She spun away quickly, not uttering a sound. The man was parchment complected, his eyes green. He moved like a snake. She recognized Dai Li when she saw them. "The Grand Secretariat sends his regards," the man said, before rushing towards the unarmed monarch, blade raised.

She rose two fingers, dropping low, and sent a bolt of greenish flame straight into the center of his neck. He skidded past her, his eyes wide and his jaw working desperately, but the only sound he made was the desperate, dying wheezes out the new hole in his throat. She leaned down toward him. "And the Fire Lady sends hers."

She looked into the back of her chambers. The wooden beams had been bowed out. He snuck in through the cliff itself. Oh, that was just brazen. And it also absolved her guards of negligence. It also meant that she was going to have to finally fork over the monumental sum it would take to plate the inner sanctum of the palace in metal. She sighed, feeling the gouged surface of her mask. If there were any option other than rulership, she would have gladly taken it right now. All she wanted was her family back. She clapped briskly, and servants began to run to her. They would deal with the body, and the damage.

A brief panic on the part of her underlings later, she was sitting in her study, when the door opened and Jee poked his head in. "I heard about what happened," he said. "Are you alright?"

"It wouldn't be the first time somebody tried to kill me, and I doubt it will be the last," Ursa said dismissively. She looked up at the man once more. "Have you found any word?"

"I'm sorry, Your Eminence," Jee said, his eyes downcast, "but nobody has any word about Azula's whereabouts. There is a rumor that she might even be..."

"Don't say it. Don't taint the air with that utterance," Ursa snapped. Jee didn't recoil. He just looked at her, the old soldier recognizing the pain in her voice. "I'm sorry. I just don't know what to do. She deserved more from me. Better. I feel like I'm failing her."

"You'll find her," Jee said.

"How can you be sure?"

"Because if she's anything like you, death itself wouldn't be able to take her even if it came upon her sleeping."

* * *

The dawn was only breaking, the sun barely peeking above the horizon, but long shadows still crept along the ground. The Royal Palace grounds, once a broad vista of grass and naked stone, now played host to the landing site for dozens, if not hundreds, of the flying houses of the Wind Nomads. They could have landed anywhere sufficiently large, which would have placed them all outside the city, but instead they had to blaspheme against the memory of the Earth King and settle their outsider feet on what was once his private gardens. The woman who called herself Queen Bei could see the figures approaching the courtyard. They were not silent, because their target would not care how quiet they were. But they were secretive.

The smile on her face grew as the broad circle of her best men began to form. Beifong had been in Ba Sing Se too long as it was. A month of her presence might have caused irreparable harm to her master's plans. It was enough of a problem that the little bitch had chosen to park her house in the very center of the plaza, so they would have to travel just that little bit farther to reach her. But it wouldn't protect her. However much Beifong claimed to be the greatest earthbender in the world, nobody was good enough to survive what was coming. She watched as the rough ring all turned in without a word being said, and in fluid motion, slammed stone up and out of the ground, hurtling it together directly over the bulbous shape. Then, with a rumble like a mountain collapsing under its own weight, the entire block fell, smashing the flying house into slag.

Bei smiled, and turned away from the window. A pleasant start to the day. And with that distraction dealt with, she might be able to make some headway with Soon and keep the Republican thinking she would support Burning Rock. She already had the plans in motion. Long Feng would be proud of her, reward her, and she would finally take her place amongst the new Secretariats of Ba Sing Se. The Gods knew there were enough gaps in their roster as it was.

* * *

"What the **fuck** was that?" Toph roared, shoving a chunk of stone aside with one hand. Huang, oddly enough, wasn't shrieking. He just glanced around as though fascinated. Teo, though, felt like he had just about jumped out of his skin.

"I think somebody tried to kill us!" Teo answered, his voice high and panicked. She didn't hold it against him; it took a certain type to stomach an attempted assassination without batting an eyelash. But to do it while she was nursing Huang? Oh, that was a declaration of war.

Toph handed the boy to his father, then bent off a section of the wall, forming it into a metal cord which she wrapped around her arms and across the night-gown's back. It wasn't her chain, but it would do. "Can you get to Ling and Dong?" Teo nodded vigorously, standing unsteadily on his wooden legs. "Then go, get airborne as fast as you can. We can come back for Anila later. You got that?"

"What are you going to do?"

"Nobody tries to kill my family," Toph said darkly. She punched out, and the great block of stone erupted outward, sending great slabs skipping along the plaza. He took a step toward that exit, but she caught him first and hauled him down and shoved her tongue down his throat. His eyes probably bugged out, and he made an adorable sound in the back of his throat when she did so. "For luck. Now start running, Flyboy!" Toph ordered. And to Teo's credit, he followed fairly well. His legs made for a poor pace, and doubly so when she could feel earthbenders around her. Some of them moved like they were one vast organism. Others stood out, clunky and imprecise by comparison. So there were some core troops and then hired muscle. And she knew the core troops very well: Dai Li. A smile came to her face as she erupted out of the collapsed block in a completely different direction from her husband, and sent the world to attack her foes.

She could feel as some of the goons tried to cut off Teo, but he just spun low, and sent a ball of air, from the feel of it, which upended the approaching earthbender and gave him a few more seconds. Toph strongly considered breaking off, but the Dai Li were rushing toward her with a speed that didn't allow division of attention. There was a reason she liked fighting the Dai Li. They didn't make it easy for her. Her moment of worry was dissolved when others began to swoop down from the sky, not many, since airbenders were still not in great supply, but enough to surround Teo and hold the attackers at bay.

And that meant, when the first fist came flying at Toph, she had nothing left to get in the way of her wrath. Nobody hurt her family. Not ever. She smashed aside that stone glove with one metal-wrapped fist, and with her grin firmly in place, she started to cut through their number. She didn't even notice the blood.

* * *

Aang was groggy. He'd just woken up, and already he was having to deal with Queen Bei, or whoever she really was if Toph was right – and she usually was – and the representative for Burning Rock suddenly seeing eye to eye, but only against King Hu and Chancellor Tong. Their argument lasted the better part of half an hour, shouting over each other and not hearing a single word which the other said. Soon stood back with his entourage of historians and genealogists and remained neutral, in this exchange at least. Aang knew better than to think he wasn't just waiting for his own proper time to jump into the fray.

A half hour into the day, and the Avatar already had a headache.

"_You seem oddly tense_," Iroh's voice came from his side, speaking the language of the Water Tribesmen. Aang turned, and saw that the old man was holding out a cup of tea for him. Aang smiled despite his grim mood, accepting the cup with good grace.

"_I get the feeling that if I snuck away for two hours, they wouldn't even notice,_" Aang confided, holding to that same cypher. There were remarkably few people who could speak Yqanuac, so it made for a very effective 'secret language'.

"_Oh, they'd notice. And they would welcome the freedom to work toward their own ends without interruption,_" Iroh pointed out. Aang could see that Soon did watch Iroh with a seething glare.

"_I haven't been doing much interrupting as it is,_" Aang said, mopey.

"_You judge yourself too harshly,_" Iroh said. "_They have grown used to a long leash. Now that their master has demanded they heel, they are very careful to make it look like they haven't been eating from your pantry._"

"_You come up with the wackiest metaphors,_" Aang said, a smile creeping across his face.

"_It is a function of experience and worldiness. A good metaphor is like a good cup of tea. You need to..._"

Iroh was cut off by shouting outside the conference area. Aang turned, as the shouting grew more intense, then he began to feel rumblings. Earthbending, and very powerful besides. He spun, dragging his glider staff into his hand as the doors blasted open, so hard that they swung around on their hinges and buried themselves into the wall outside the frame. And at the center of that great, open threshold, was a tiny, angry, bloody, blind woman. Toph Beifong, wearing only a torn night-gown and a healthy coating of somebody else's blood, glared, her chest heaving; from effort or simple rage, Aang couldn't easily tell.

"What is the meaning of this interruption?" Tong demanded, flailing his wrinkly hands. Aang's glance to Bei saw that woman growing very pale.

"I... will destroy you. Rip you limb from limb!" Toph shouted, taking a strong stride into the room. Aang stood in her way.

"Toph, what are you whoa!" he was cut off when she motioned aside, and the entire floor slid him about a pace to the left, getting him out of her way.

"I don't know which one of you thought this was a good idea, but let me tell you right now, it wasn't," Toph said, her voice loud, raw, and dangerous. She motioned at roughly eye level. "I've had it up to here with your bullshit politics and this just tears it. One of you tried to kill me, and that's bad enough. But going after my kid? That's low, and that I will not stand. The lot of you oughtta be on your knees thanking Twinkletoes here for saving your lily-white asses from Ozai six years ago, but instead, you drag him over the coals. Ordinarily, his problem, not mine, but it just shows what sort of douchebags you really are. And I'm tired of having my homeland left in your incompetent hands, and I _will not_ put my fate in the hands of my assassins. So I'm ending this. You don't deserve the throne, not one of you."

"You are walking on dangerous ground," Queen Bei said. "You have no standing here, no nation, no armies."

Toph turned to the Representative for Burning Rock. "Perhaps not. But I know something about you. Not one of y'all will work with any of the others without waiting for the moment you need to stab each other in the back. But I can work with you," she pointed at the Republican. "This is my best, first, last, and only offer. Ditch the bitch, and as Earth King, I recognize your independence from the Fire Nation once and for all."

"That is a highly unrealistic thing to offer," Ouzen said. "I stand a far better chance of that by backing Queen Bei for Earth Queen."

"She's not Queen Bei," Iroh said idly. All eyes turned to him. Iroh turned his placid face to Soon. He held up a hand, and began to tick down fingers. "When was Princess Bei born?"

Soon stared at Iroh like he was mad, but the genealogists went pale, and began to talk amongst themselves. One of them leaned forward and whispered into Soon's ear. Soon went red with anger, and swung his gaze to Bei. "Twenty three years ago," he said, addressing the counterfeit who was clearly _much_ older. "You lied to me. You are an impostor! A charlatan! This will end at the point of a lance!"

"See? Your position ain't looking so solid now, is it?" Toph said, the smile pulling at the blood which was smeared across her face.

"We will not hand over this Earth Kingdom to you, some random peasant from the Gods only know where," Tong said.

"Twinkletoes told me about you," Toph said, walking toward one of the side walls. "How you tried to burn him in oil for something two Avatars ago did. And then, handed over your town on a silver platter to the Fire Nation. What ever did become of Chin, I wonder?" she asked sarcastically.

"What does Chin have to do with this?" King Hu demanded.

"Tong was the mayor," Aang said.

"He shows a very poor track record for leadership," Iroh piped up. All eyes fell on Tong.

"That's... in the past..." Tong said meekly.

"You know what, you're all going to justify this to yourselves one way or another, so I'm going to make this abundantly clear for you assholes," Toph said. She turned and slammed her fists into that wall. The entire wall crumbled, showing the throne room, the great throne of the Earth King nestled under the badgermole baldachin. She purposefully strode the distance, and it was not short, between the room where past Earth Kings took their courtiers. Aang moved with her, somewhat, while the others stayed near the hole in the wall, looking a bit frazzled. Iroh remained, standing beside a pillar, his hands folded into his sleeves.

Toph turned, staring down at them from the dais, and sat hard in the throne, leaning toward them with an intense glare in her milky, sightless eyes. "And that's the way it's going to be. Now do yourselves a favor, and bow to your Earth King now. I'm not going to give you another opportunity, so you might want to think real hard on how much you'll stand to lose if you don't."

"You have no right!" Hu shouted.

"I have alliances with more than a hundred of the smaller states. That means I can muster an army twice as big as any one of yours. I'd say that gives me all the right I need," Toph said, lounging on the throne.

The kings, representatives, and Chancellor all shared glances, but the man from Burning Rock was the first to act. He moved to the floor before the throne, and got down onto his knees. "Burning Rock recognizes the authority of Earth King Beifong."

"You coward! You idiot! You've just given her legitimacy!" Bei roared.

"Shut up, whore," Soon said. "I will stand against her, but not with you. You will stand alone. As it was always meant to be."

Aang couldn't help but marvel at how a bloody, underdeveloped, non-noble now commanded the room. No doubt by this time tomorrow, she would control the palace, and the City. She smiled. "Good choice, bucko. The Earth Kingdoms recognizes the independence of the Republic-City of Burning Rock."

It would be the proclamation heard 'round the world, Aang considered. A new dynasty of Earth Kings, under Earth King Toph. And as he thought back, he really couldn't see this happening any other way. A smile came to his face, the headache vanishing, as he started to laugh. Destiny could be a funny thing.

Bei, or whoever she really was, shot one last glare at Iroh before storming out of the room. The other nobles began to shout and argue amongst themselves, while the Republican quietly left to get some things to make her proclamation official. Iroh and Aang both went up to the throne, where Toph, bloody and bruised and lacerated though she may be, looked positively post-coital. "I'd say that's a good start to the day," Toph said smugly.

"Indeed," Iroh said. He ran a hand down his beard for a moment. "Did anybody else have breakfast yet? I know a wonderful dumpling vender in the lower ring. His pastries are divine!"

"Call him in. I could do with a good meal," Toph said.

"You do realize this is going to get messy?" Aang pointed out. "This is going to cause a war."

"Contrary to your opinion, Twinkletoes, sometimes it's way healthier for people just to fight. Trust me, I've got a hundred and fifty years of being a man telling me so. Better they get the hate out of their system now while it's nice and dilute instead of letting it build up and turn even more poisonous six months, a year, or a decade from now. Clear the air," she said, nodding to herself.

"We should still try to head this off somehow," Aang said, even if he did understand what she was getting at. "There might still be a diplomatic answer to this..."

Both the young woman and the old man looked at him for a moment, before scoffing loudly and waving him away.

* * *

_Leave a review._


	14. A Perfect World

**For those of you who were where wondering what it looks like when Azula fights without anything holding her back, you're about to see for yourself. And do bear in mind that a month has passed since "Picking up the Pieces."**

* * *

The Island of Pulse bore a startling similarity to the outposts of the Hui Jungle. It was much hotter than the rest of Great Whales, wetter, and overgrown with gargantuanly tall trees. It wasn't as overgrown as Hui, the trees weren't quite as effective in creating a canopy, but the Sequoia-Palm trees sheltered an entire ecosystem of animals, which filled the night with sound. The only direction not utterly hemmed in by foliage was to the dark south, which held a short stretch of deceptively deep water, then a small island with a hill on its far side. The broad tent which the Tribesmen had strung between the massive trees wasn't just to keep the rain off of their heads. Coconuts, the size of small bull pigs, occasionally fell from the canopy, and a sloping tent kept it from smashing some hapless sleeper to death on the ground. It was a hostile environment for a firebender: too wet to burn, too cold to be comfortable, too dark to see the sun.

Azula was cold. She knew she had no reason to be besides her own inattention. Her Uncle had countless interesting tricks which a firebender could utilize, uses not related to combat, but which could bring about dozens or hundreds of unique utilities which would have made one's life easier. It didn't surprise her, though, that Ozai never let his brother teach her: as masterful a firebender as Iroh admittedly was, for all his cookiness and laziness, Ozai would not dare let somebody like Iroh have consistent contact with his children. Because he wanted things out of them which they would only offer if they were bereft of the desire for independent thought. His oversight in letting Zuzu scamper off with Uncle proved by be Ozai's downfall. Azula huddled in on herself, wishing she hadn't have been so obstinate as a child, wishing she'd been a bit more attentive. Wishing Ozai had dropped dead the day she was born.

She looked down at her arms, tucked close to her chest. Scars. She'd done that to herself. She peeled the skin on her arms away like the flesh of an orange, awkwardly and deliberately. Not because she thought it would give her any advantage or means of escape, or even that if she dug deep enough she could open an artery and simply die. No, she did that, because she needed to have some control of _something_, even if it was her own pain. Chittering and chattering and droning filled the air as she accepted that she'd done this self-mutilating thing to herself. Basu the air bison's low bass bellow brought some silence to the forest.

This was what it was, and it would be as it would be. There was no way around it, and no point in denying it. Trying to deny what she was drove her to the point of oblivion. Worse, it made her into nothing more than Ozai's puppet, obediently sitting at home on a worthless throne in a hollow appointment. Waiting for some glimmer of parental approval. A glimmer that Ozai was utterly incapable of giving. She didn't know how he could have fallen so far, become so inhuman. If nothing else, the man _was_ still a role model, but in the manner opposite he expected; every choice he made, so obviously wrong, would be avoided like the embrace of a plague-bearer.

Yes. Azula was bitter. Why wouldn't she be? Everything she thought she was turned out to be a construction that Ozai had built into her to suit his purposes. He couldn't do everything on his own, so he created a faithful little soldier, terrifying and powerful, to draw the ire and terror and hatred of his people, the dragon to his Sozin, something to be used until its utility had failed it, then served up to the outraged populace on a platter to sate their wrath. It wasn't even that she was guessing that was his intention. He had said it, aloud, not even bothering to dim his tone with her hanging from the ceiling like a butchered hogmonkey.

A tear came to her eye as she pulled a little tighter. Even though she knew, intellectually, that it wasn't her fault, she still felt unclean. Like for some reason, there was something in her that made her deserve all of this.

There was a shifting in the blankets, and she felt some warmth begin to seep into her, a dark arm sliding around her and idly pulling in a bit. Like a physical substance, she could feel that grim despair flowing out of her as Ked tucked tight behind her in his sleep. The past made her _what_ she was, but it didn't determine _who_ she was. Despite their best attempts to destroy her so completely that she would live a hollow shell of a woman, she was alive. Despite her unthinking lashing out at all of those people around her, she still had friends. That was a thought which even now felt so strange as it settled into her apperception. _Azula_ had friends. Ty Lee, so loyal and so loving that even attempted murder would not drive her away. If she were a more religious person, she would have thanked Agni for giving Azula so forgiving a friend as her.

Even as the warmth and sensation of safety began to send her down, away from that slowly ramping noise, she thought of others. The blind earthbender, for example. She said she knew that Azula wasn't going to kill her. Even Azula didn't know that. Others had so much faith in her. She didn't understand why. Not yet. She would, though; she had as much time to understand as she needed, since Sokka promised that they would not head north to the Fire Nation until she asked to. She could see why Ty Lee loved him. He was intelligent enough to not be a slave to preconceptions. He was willing to be wrong, to admit his own mistakes and grow from them. He accepted people as they were.

Her mind briefly went to Bi, the former princess. In a way, looking at that woman was like looking at herself. Bi was what Azula could have been if she were truly alone. Angry, self-destructive, looking for any cause to fight for, because there was almost nothing left inside. She had spent much of the last month in various degrees of intoxication. Passive suicide, Ked had called it.

Ked was the last one, as her mind became truly foggy. He loved her. She didn't know how or why, what she could have possibly done to inspire that reaction. Maybe he, like those other people around her, saw something in her that even she was blind to. Maybe. Most vexingly, she didn't know if _she_ loved _him_. How could she? She had no idea what it was supposed to feel like. Even before what Ozai did, she had been quick to dismiss emotionality. Feelings were things for _girls_ like Ty Lee or Zuko. She was a warrior, and had been for a long time. She missed out on much, she was coming to realize. But she had time. Pulled close, the Tribesman curled around her like a suit of armor, she actually felt safe. As she slid into a restful sleep, there was a tiny smile on her face.

* * *

**Chapter 14: A Perfect World**

* * *

Bi blinked her way awake, smacking her lips. Oddly, she didn't awaken to a mouth which tasted like week-old death, like she usually did. And her head wasn't pounding. It must have been her lucky day. She sat up, letting out a highly un-feminine yawn, cracking the various joints in her body as she looked up at the leaves so far above. She scowled. Something seemed off, though. Were the leaves that color before?

The day seemed to be dawning well enough. No hang-over, no death-breath, pleasantly temperate, no having to deal with angry townsfolk. Although, to her credit, that last one was kinda her fault to begin with. "Well, that's a start," she said. She looked around, but quickly found herself scanning the ground around her. She was alone. The sounds of the birds and animals sounded around her, but the Tribesman wasn't snoring, the acrobat wasn't being all... happy... the princess wasn't bitching and complaining and her self-appointed bodyguard wasn't being a general mope. There was no sign of any of them. She was alone.

"Oh, you've gotta be kidding me," Bi muttered. "I get us thrown out of _one_ town and you all ditch me in the ass end of Pulse? Dickweeds."

Bi scratched at her skin, but oddly, only for a moment before moving on. Usually, it felt like she'd rolled in crushed glass every morning. She patted her back, and her eyes went wide. "Where the hell are my swords! Who took my weapons? Show yourself you inbred mush-mouthed copper-haired sack-wipes! I'll beat you to death with my bare hands!" she shouted. The chattering of hogmonkeys answered her. She grumbled to herself, stomping away from... wherever it was that she was.

"That's not the kind of wake up that I'm used to," a familiar voice said from somewhere nearby. Bi actually missed a step, caught her foot on a root and fell flat on her face. She shook the stars from her eyes, looking up through fuzzy vision and an odd tingling sensation, as a tall man stared down at her. She couldn't quite get her eyes to focus. "You're going to have to do better than that if you want to keep up."

With that, he was off like a shot, bounding over the larger roots of the shorter trees with the broad, reddish leaves. She got to her feet and ran about three steps, before she stopped. Red leaves? Sequoia-Palm had green all year round. And if she was in Pulse, those were what the trees of the forest would be. She frowned. Something was off. She scratched at the tingling sensation the same way she used to scratch at the insufferable and eternal itch; neither would go away. As suspicious as she was, she wanted to know. So she started to run after him. It couldn't be. Her eyes said one thing, but her mind said another. There was a jolt, which made her stagger in her run. Like tiny electric people giving her tiny electric hugs. She shook her head, dull brown hair flicking past her eyes.

"This isn't the time for this bullshit," Bi muttered.

"You're falling behind, Smellerbee," the voice taunted, echoing through the forest. Bi scowled, and started running faster. Oddly, she didn't seem to be getting tired, not the way she did nowadays. She knew something was definitely off–

Another zap.

"What in the shit-piles of the Cave of Lovers was that?" Bi demanded. But nothing answered her. She got herself moving again. That tingling was beginning to become distracting. But she would not stop. Not now. And when she came to a stop, she could understand why she had fought so hard to keep on her feet. Leaning against the tree, a sprig of wheat dangling from his teeth, he stood. He was large as life, larger even. Keen dark eyes took her in as he smiled to himself that way only he could.

"Jet," Bi said. Jet smiled at her.

"There's my girl," he said. That tingling grew stronger, as Bi began to glare.

Because she knew that this was wrong.

* * *

Ty Lee woke up, a beam of sunlight breaking through the canopy just for her. It made her smile. She rolled over, feeling that sort of heady, groggy dumbness which came with waking up next to her husband, particularly after the kind of night they'd had before. Out of respect for Azula, they'd camped a good ways away. She looked down at her husband, who was still dead to the world, and planted a kiss on the side of his neck. He muttered something, and rolled over. Let him sleep. They were alright. Everything was alright. Well, except for that war, but there wasn't anything she herself could do about it.

She got up, stretching like a cat as she pulled on some clothing and bounced gleefully into the morning light. The partial canopy let light dapple in at an acute angle, golden and warm against the vanishing night. There was an odd tingle in her hands and feet, but she was just waking up. It would probably pass with the grogginess.

"Everything's going to be alright," she said to herself, a broad smile on her face. It wasn't quite a mantra, but it was a belief she never even tried to shake. It was something which did her quite well to recall, no matter how bleak things got. The people she loved were safe. The Gods were in the heavens, all was right in the world. She saw Ked stirring at their somewhat distant camp, with their own dead fire. She waved broadly at him, and he gave her a smile and a nod back. She didn't know why he and Sokka didn't get along. He was a nice guy, and he was very good to Azula. That alone made her like him. In fact, he was a lot like Sokka, in a lot of ways. If she were somewhat more clever, she would have figured out that it might be for that very reason they got on each others nerves.

The low bellow of Basu sounded out in the forest, and for a moment, all of the other noise of morning died away, shying back from something obviously much bigger and meaner than they were. She smiled at that, too, skipping along the forest floor. She was well past the age where she should have stopped such childish behavior, but it made her happy, so she didn't bother. And that smile ratcheted up another couple of notches when another call bellowed out, like the first, but somewhat higher pitched. Her eyes went wide, and with a sprint which sent humus flying behind her, airbending tearing the wind resistance into almost nothing and giving her a backwind bearing the velocity of a hurricane, she was shooting through the forest, bounding around the roots and fallen logs of aged sentinels.

She came to a sudden stop at the edge of a clearing, not far from where they had all set up camp. The bits and bobs caught up in her bow wave scattered out before her after her sudden stop. The two sky bison were giving each other the usual bison treatment. A quick sniff, then a big lick at the ears. The sole passenger of Appa bounded off the elder beast's head, landing lightly, the glider staff the Mechanist built for him held behind him.

"AANG!" she squealed, running forward to give the Avatar one of her usual, rib-crushing hugs. He seemed oddly tense, though. "Nobody told me you were going to come here and we managed to find Azula and she's going to be alright and her aura isn't blue anymore and you know how I told you that was a good thing but she was crying a lot so Ked had to talk to her a bunch and now they're..."

"Ty Lee, not now," Aang said harshly. She released him, taking a quick step back. He had a very focused look on his face. "She's here, isn't she?"

"Yeah, but..." Ty Lee said, uncomfortable with the way he sounded. Angry. She would look at his aura, but that was a sure way to give herself a migraine.

"Good. This got put off long enough," Aang said.

Ty Lee's eyes went wide. She knew hatred when she heard it. "Why are you here?"

"Azula is too much of a threat," Aang said, striding – no, _stomping_ – past the acrobat-cum-airbender. "It's time I neutralized that threat for the good of the world."

"Aang, don't do this!" Ty Lee said. He roughly shoved her aside when she tried to stand in his way. She landed hard on a rock, but the pain was oddly tingly at the back of her head. She shook the darkness away from her vision. "You promised Mai! You promised you wouldn't do this!"

"Some promises can't afford to be kept," the Avatar said heartlessly.

"I won't let you do it," Ty Lee said. Aang smirked at her.

"Like you could even stop me," he said. Her dark eyes narrowed, and she closed her hands into fists. Nobody was going to hurt her friend. Not even the Avatar.

* * *

Azula sat up, a very distinct buzzing sounding in her ears, a very familiar buzzing. There was a tingling sensation all over her body, something she recognized as innately off. She got to her feet, looking around the camp. She could see the various parts of it; the place where the airbender and the Tribesmen camped to give Azula some privacy. Where she and Ked had huddled close to their own fire. The bedroll in the shadows where the deposed royal slept. But the entire scene lacked definition.

**Forget**

She scowled, the buzzing growing louder, the tingling beginning to overwhelm her senses. She focused beyond it, though, clutching at her head with a growl. That was not her own mind, she could tell that as easily as she could tell her own reflection in the mirror. Well, as easily as she could now, since she stopped denying that she'd aged six years and now had a stark resemblance to her mother. Especially around the cheeks and eyes – he's trying it again.

**Forget**

"No!" she shouted. She twisted one hand to her side, and even though she didn't feel the energy pulling itself apart, she focused outward, and a harsh zap sounded as a thin strand of lightning flowed out of her and bit into the landscape. Where it hit, it dissolved briefly into featurelessness, before slowly reconstituting itself. And for that moment, the buzzing abated, the tingly resolved. "I know your game. It won't work on me."

**Oh, believe me, it will. Just give it a bit more time, human**.

She looked around the campsite. Everything was there, but nothing was clear. The body of Ked lying in the bedroll looked like him, right down to the way his hair moved past his ears. But he was motionless, no breath. And not dead. She knew death, she had seen it. Just not alive. A facsimile, and not a very good one.

**Oh, now that's just insulting**.

She flared her fingers, and fire erupted above her hand. Not in the Spirit world, then. That was good, because there, the only thing she would have been able to use was her own wits. And while that did not leave her at all disarmed, she preferred to have a much vaster arsenal at her disposal. "I know that this isn't real. This is an illusion. You're trying to trick me," Azula said, turning swiftly, her very long hair flowing as she spun, trying to see what would be making such artifice.

**Forget**

"Go to Hell," Azula shouted. The voice slid along her own thoughts, trying to interpose itself, trying to make her think she was thinking something she wasn't thinking, believe something she would not believe. To fool her into thinking another thing's thoughts.

**You know nothing of hell, human. Would you like to? I have learned so much. So many horrible things. Like where you shouldn't put a turnip.**

"You can't fool me. I know my own mind. I know it better than any sane person ever could," Azula attested.

**It always comes to the Lil... humans to weaponize insanity. Too crazy to fool, eh?**

Azula began to smirk. As much as the voice, skittering about at the back of her mind wanted to be incognito, she could already guess who it was. "That's the interesting property of scar tissue. It's much tougher than the skin it replaces. I know that very, very well."

The buzzing ramped up, the voice trying once more to get behind her defenses. But they weren't really defenses, she recognized. The walls to her mind were fallen, crumbled and disposed. That meant he could get in, but at the same time, there was nothing obscuring her view of him. She could see every move he made, every thought he tried to implant, every false cognition and percept; she ruthlessly excised that cancer he implanted before it could take root. She was fighting a war inside her own mind.

**You can't keep this up forever.**

"Neither can you," Azula said, a smirk growing on her face. She felt that buzzing waxing, and the world came into focus. He'd gotten a foothold, she could sense it. She knew it wasn't her thoughts, but at the same time, she couldn't tear it away, either. Not yet. She glanced back. A window frame was built into a tree behind her. The shattered glass of the pane was black. "But I don't have to. Because I'm asleep. I'm dreaming right now. Sooner or later, I'll wake up."

"**Not if I don't let you,**" he answered her. She cast aside another hand, the lightning spilling out of her, and forming into the shape of a man. At first, it was just a ball of sputtering thunder and light, but with a crack, it became flesh, but not human. Not strictly. Its face was oddly proportioned, its greyed hair spotty, its teeth too large for its mouth. It had no eyes at all. It was like something trying to look human but having forgotten how. "**Oh, now that's a trick I didn't think you'd figure out**."

"Irukandji," Azula said harshly, as the world dissolved into featurelessness. "I ought have known you'd be back, since I didn't sit five days with your corpse."

Irukandji, in that eyeless, blunt-toothed visage that he now held, grinned. "**Would you like to hear about how much I've come to HATE humanity in the last _eight years_?**"

* * *

Smellerbee stared at her mentor, her friend, her savior, her lover. No, stared wasn't the word. She glared. "What are you doing here, Jet?" Bi demanded. Jet smirked.

"You always did sleep in late."

"I'm referring to here as in alive," Bi said, her eyes narrowing. He made a flippant dismissal.

"What can I say? I'm a lot harder to kill than most people take for granted," Jet said. A part of Bi wanted to simply accept this strange miracle and throw herself into his arms. But Bi was far too cynical a woman to ever accept something that seemed too good to be true.

"You're dead."

"I got better," Jet smirked. The tingling in Bi's body began to become rather distracting, but she ground her teeth, shaking her head and turning away.

"You didn't get better. You were dead as the rock which smashed your ribs in. Long Feng had your body burned, your ashes scattered. Nobody comes back from something like that, not even the Avatar, so definitely not you."

"I don't understand what you're talking about. Who's Long Feng?" Jet asked.

Bi felt that buzzing pulse again, and she almost just let the madness take her, wash away all of her doubt and let her slide into a blissful oblivion. But there was a saying that Jet had exposed her to, years and years ago. Pure cussedness will take you farther than a Ru Nani Ostrich Horse. Yes, she was being stubborn beyond the point of reason. But reason was exactly the point. She had to focus.

"Bi, come on, don't be like that. Was it something I was supposed to..." there was another pulse, but this time, when it happened, Bi was paying closer attention. As it pulsed, the leaves changed color, the trees changed texture. Seeing it change told her what she needed to know. Somebody was trying to make her think she was somewhere else, somewhere not Pulse, separated from the rest of the people whom she now tagged along with. She didn't know how, and truth be told, she really didn't care. Because she already had a notion of how to get out of it.

"Alright. This's gone on long enough as it was," Bi said. "Your cheap tricks ain't gonna work on me, so knock it off."

The colors of the forest flickered as the buzzing and tingling ramped up until it was outright painful, but she held onto herself, onto what she knew beyond all doubt was real, the forest in Pulse, the tribesmen and the airbender and the fallen royalty. The beast which was now used to her puking over the side of its flank every morning from airsickness. That was real. This was just a cheap trick. The pain of electrocution snapped to its peak, then with a clipped shout, she felt all of her muscles go rigid at once, something which even she, a woman with no formal training in medicine, knew was almost anatomically impossible and as such, extremely painful. The pain was welcome, because it was real.

As the stars cleared from Bi's vision, somebody was standing in the center of camp... at least, it was almost somebody. It's face was wrong, out of proportion, and eyeless. Ked and Ty Lee went about their business as though he wasn't there. Sokka was sleeping... or perhaps not, because his eyes were drooping, staring at nothing, and he barely seemed to breathe. Azula's eyes were closed, as she squirmed on the ground. The man-thing let out a laugh which echoed with thunder and bounced against itself somehow.

"**I must really be losing my touch. To have a ****human**** kick me out? Ara was right. I **_**am**_** losing my edge,**" it said. It seemed to stare at her, its form flickering instead of moving, as though it forgot that smoothness of motion was not an option, to be ignored. "**But it's just a matter of rewriting a few things and...**"

The thing reached out for her, but recoiled as though it were burned. "Too hot?"

"**DAMN YOU MONKEY PEOPLE!**" it shrieked. "**Is there one of you on ****any**** world in the ****fucking cosmos**** that hasn't turned insanity into a weapon?**"

"What can I say? I'm never unarmed," she smirked, reaching back and grabbing the hook-swords which were under her pillow. "So who the hell are you?"

"**My face on the... Oh, very funny. Bait and switch. Well, if you can't be my little meat puppet, then I'll play with the ones that I do have.**"

Bi scowled. "What?" she demanded. But the man-like thing snapped, and burst apart into a flash of lightning, which slammed into the bodies of Azula, Ty Lee, and Ked. The latter two turned to her, a look of betrayal on the airbender's face, and a look of rage on the waterbender's.

"Why _are_ you here?" Ty Lee asked, shock plain on her face. Ked just glared, his hand sliding toward his water flask. Bi looked between them.

"Look, I know I'm kinda crashing the party as it is, but that doesn't mean..." Bi said, admitting what she didn't like to. Truth was, she really didn't have a place here. Or anywhere. But the answer didn't seem to register, or at least, the answer she gave.

"Aang, don't do this!" Ty Lee said, a placating gesture with her hands. Ked, on the other hand, was obviously waiting "You promised Mai! You promised you wouldn't do this!"

Bi leaned back a bit. "What the hell are you talking about? Do I _look_ like the Avatar? I mean he's... oh, crap," she said, as it finally sank in what was happening. Meat puppets. Gods damn it all.

"I won't let you do it," Ty Lee's voice rose to a shout, her brown eyes flicking over from kindness and betrayal to bloody murder, her will overwritten by that creature. Ked lashed out faster, a whip of water slashing at her. With a yelp, she dove aside, the blade of water just barely missing her head. She rolled to a stop next to Sokka, and gave the Tribesman a harsh shove, hoping that he wouldn't be as maddened as the others.

"Come on you lazy bastard! Get up!" Sokka did not respond in the least.

"No! He's your friend too!" Ty Lee screamed, then ran forward with astounding speed. Bi's eyes went wide as she found herself desperately parrying away Ty Lee's fists. She heard from the princess over there how dangerous Ty Lee was unarmed. One touch, and she was screwed. Screwed and dead, with that thing floating around inside her brain. Sokka was out of this. She had to...

Damn it! No time to think! "I'm going to regret this later," Bi said, just getting around a jab which would have paralyzed her from the chin down. She saw Ty Lee's fist come forward again, and she tucked her chin down and steadied for the impact. The airbender's fist collided with the center of Bi's forehead, cracking painfully. The airbender backed off a step, waggling an injured hand. "Nice try," Smellerbee said sarcastically. But her eyes went wide as Ked shoved past her, one arm gone that horrible beyond-blackness. She staggered back, barely avoiding a platypus-bear-like swipe which would have torn her soul out.

"Godsdamnit! Can't you guys give me one goddamned second to think?" she shouted.

"No, you're not going to hurt her anymore," Ked said, the hatred so clear on his face that Bi had to wonder who he was seeing. Ty Lee saw Aang; so who did Ked see her as? "Never. Again."

Eyes darting between the two companions turned deadly opponents, Bi took a step back, her hook swords before her. Sokka was down. Maybe Azula would be more useful.

* * *

"**You know, I once had plans for you. Plans involving Fava beans and a pleasant chianti,**" the monstrocity said. "**Somebody with your level of visceral terror would have sustained me for a century. And it was the good shit, too, mortal, mind breaking soul destroying terror, none of this weaksauce worry that people pass off as fear.**"

Azula smirked as the thing began to pace.

"**I mean, I'm a god of wealth and taste! I have to have the best! Oh, back in the day, when people worshiped me in terror and blood, those were the days. But now, people went all secular and turned their backs on me. It's been a hungry millennium. People just don't get scared like they used to,**" Irukandji complained.

"So sorry to disappoint," Azula said, a smirk coming to her face. The featureless plain shimmered for a moment, as though seen through a heat wave.

"**DON'T INTERRUPT MY MONOLOGUING!**" Irukandji shrieked. "**Do you have any idea what **_**they**_** did to me? How many times? I got eaten by a me-damned PENGUIN! TURNIPS DON'T GO IN THOSE PLACES!**"

"It sounds like you've had a rough month," Azula opined.

"**Month? MONTH? Eight years! Eight years with the snot people and those... ****girls****...**" Irukandji shuddered upon recalling them.

"Then you must be so very glad to be home. I don't see what this has to do with me... unless you've finally burned through the last of your previous meal, and are now looking to collect a new morsel," she said, a brow rising.

"**Meal? You think I'm thinking about food at a time like this? Fuck food! I don't care if I miss out. I'm just going to kill you and find another version of you to munch on. Maybe I'll go to ****that place with the foggy town! Lots of mentally damaged, fearful people there!**"

"Kill me?" she repeated.

"**Don't mind if I do,**" Irukandji's face shifted, looking a bit more human for a moment. "**It's the one thing which kept me going for that interminable shitstorm. The thought of coming back here and destroying you. Killing you, then diving into the Sea of Souls after your spirit, and smashing it to bits against the bricks of the well of regrets. I will flense it, filet it, saute it, serve it with potatoes with a side of endives and a red wine from wait a minute I'm going off track a bit. Where was I?**"

"You were leaving for that town," Azula said, forcing herself to casually inspect her nails. Oddly, they finally seemed to be growing again. Ironic, since she finally decided that she was beginning to prefer them short.

"**Ah right. Let's see if Harry's strangled his daughter yet...**" he grinned, but turned back to her, glaring eyelessly at her. "**Wait a minute. You're just trying to... Oh, that's not going to work twice.**"

Azula shrugged. "Couldn't hurt to try, especially since I just need to wait until I wake up to end this pointless charade," she said. Irukandji stared at her for a long moment, then began to cackle.

"**Oh, you won't be waking up. You're body is already dead. Or will be soon enough. And besides, everything human is in the brain, and I control your brain,**" Irukandji pointed out.

"No," Azula said. "You control lightning, the electrical force," Azula smirked, pulling her hands through the air, lightning surging down her arms to gather in tight, angry clusters near the edges of her fingernails. "And as it turns out, so can I."

"**You can't hurt me in a dream,**" Irukandji pointed out.

"Not physically," she answered, smirking. "But is not the mind simply electricity?" And then she cast out her hand, and lightning flowed with it.

* * *

Between Ty Lee's looks of betrayal so acute that they were almost physically painful – around which her Dim Mak would have been possibly lethal – and the Tribesman's almost inarticulate rage and creepy-ass waterbending, Bi found herself hard pressed. And since her weapons were of little use against whips of water, and of absolutely none against blasts of air and tearing winds, she knew she wouldn't last long.

"Goddamnit all! Why did you have to do this when I was hung over?" Bi shouted, ignoring the pounding headache which plagued her both from the fairly intense amount of drinking she'd done the night before – which had a number of unintended consequences – and the ejection of that monster thing from her mind. She ducked under a swipe of the void-hand, and then had to dive aside so that Ty Lee's light touch didn't turn into a paralyzing jab. "Don't it just figure that I'm the one who's got to drag you all out of this shit-storm," she muttered to herself, breathing hard. At least, it was a comfort, that Ked looked just as fatigued as she was. No such luck with the airbender.

Her plan had two parts, such as it was. The first part was going swimmingly, in that she'd managed to draw the both of them away from Azula. The next part, the really 'interesting' part, was how she was going to wake the torpid woman before the two of them murdered her. With a growl which was not particularly human, let alone feminine, she spun and deflected a jab at her back, carrying it to the side. With a smirk, she swung and buried her other hook sword against the first, locking it, and Ty Lee's arm, to the massive bulk of the Sequoia-Palm. "You can just stay right here."

"Please! Don't do it! She's better now!" Ty Lee begged, weeping openly and pulling desperately at her arm.

"He made a mistake," Ked snarled, ignoring the airbender as though he couldn't even hear her. And it was quite possible that he couldn't. "He should have just killed you. That would have been the greatest kindness in the world."

"Ked, I've gotta say, kiddo, you've got hella issues," Smellerbee noted, before getting the energy of adrenaline and panic into her legs, and she started running again. She just had to reach Azula first. She let out a yelp when a water-whip tore a chunk off of one of the behemoth trees, having just missed her head. She amended her earlier requirements. She had to reach Azula, and she had to be alive. Her legs were flagging. She knew well the limits of her own endurance. But she also knew one other thing, something Jet had taught her well. Never give up, never compromise, never surrender, not even in the face of Armageddon. That mindset, added with her blunt nature and her distinct lack of time, gave her exactly one option.

She slid on her knees in the humus, grabbing Azula by the back of he head, and with a growl, back handed her across the face.

* * *

"**You can't beat me. Nobody can. Don't feel bad. I've survived far worse than you,**" Irukandji said, shaking and sparking with electricity, not all of it his own. "**I existed as an entity when the cosmos was in its infancy. I will live to see the far side of its end. I'm not some pathetic spirit. I am something more. And I'm running out of patience with you.**"

"And if I cared, I might bother being impressed," Azula said. As she continued to circle, she glanced back, and could see something on her back. It was not the glowing strand, like when Ked mellowed her dreams. This was something else, something spiky and more natural, more personal. This was pain. Physical pain. And it led somewhere. "But since _I've_ run of patience with _you_, I think it's time that we ended this little game. Get out of my dreams."

"**Make me,**" Irukandji said, grinning with those over-large, blunt teeth.

She smirked, in that way only she could, and grasped the sensation that reached down to her from the waking world, and heaved herself upward. It was like lifting herself up by her own boots.

Azula's eyes slammed open to a crack of thunder, and she saw brown eyes staring down into hers, felt a painful hand-print across her cheek. Not wasting an instant, she bolted upright, shoving Bi aside, just in time to get her out of the way of Ked's void-handed haymaker. The ground that he punched instead became baked and dead. He glanced at her, what recognition he had was obviously not of her. He was seeing somebody else. "How could you do it? How could you do it to her after all those years?"

Azula declined answering. Despite her disinclination to harm him, she detonated a percussion between them. Bi was sent rolling. Ked was sent flying. Azula stood her ground. "I am tired of these games, Irukandji. I know you're around here somewhere. Now show yourself."

No answer. So instead, Azula looked out into the woods. Where was he hiding? Ked bounded to his feet and ran off, unnatural laughter coming from his mouth. Obviously, there. Azula scowled, and took off after him. Just before she passed out of the clearing which held their campsite, she cast a look over her shoulder at the other royal. "Ked's bag, second pouch. Pour the entire vial into Ty Lee. It'll put her to sleep!" she shouted as she took off after the waterbender. And yet, not a waterbender. Not entirely, not now. A fortnight ago, she would have just let him run off. A month ago, she would have let the creature kill her. A month had changed much.

She faced him on a cliff, of sorts. It overlooked the strait, and he was smiling as though his mouth couldn't open large enough to do it right. His eyes glimmered with malice, something she knew beyond all shadow of a doubt would never come from Ked himself. "Get out," she said, not even winded after her sprint. She had him to thank for that.

"**Bite me,**" Irukandji's voice answered from inside Ked. "**Oh, you're not going to like this. So much fun stuff in here. What's this? Oh, he loves you does he? HA! That must burn you alive, because you are just so utterly fucked up that you could never believe that about anybody. Sick, sad, insufferable, unlovable little monster named Azula. I am going to destroy every part of your life, and I don't care how long it takes. I'm going to hunt down your precious Mama and force her to skin herself as she screams her scorn at her failure of a daughter. I'm going to knock down your brother's defenses and let Long Feng crush him to death under increasing weights of rocks, because he seems that type. And then, and only then, will I kill you, rape your corpse, then piss on it, just because I can. I have that capability, now. But first, I'm going to destroy Ked's mind. Because ****nothing seems more appropriate than having him be as cr–**"

Unwilling to hear another word, she created a vacuum inside herself. It was not of air, but rather of energy. Her brother had done this once before, out of sheer desperation at Azula's insane and pointless attempt to murder Mai. Now, she was doing much the same. Her pool of chi was extremely deep; if the sun winked out in the heavens, she would probably be able to firebend at 'reasonable' strength for hours. Eclipses held little terror for her. Now, she used that capacity as a void, to draw in more energy. The wrong kinds of energy. The electricity which had no place in a Tribesman's mind.

And it came. Ked fell to his knees as lightning, harsh and crackling, began to be pulled out of his head. It raked along his short hair, as though trying to find better purchase, afraid to let go. But she was stronger, and she would not be denied. Not now. She was inventing an entirely new discipline of lightning bending, so much more careful than what Zuko had attempted, something more complete. And she did it out of sheer, hot-minded desperation. Finally, the last tendril of harsh blue light released from Ked's brow and slammed up her fingers, into her pool of chi. With a thrust of two fingers, she cast it away, across that strait and onto the island across the water. The lightning bolt fell with a characteristic bang, and standing on the scarred turf was Irukandji, his face slightly more human, his hair, no longer absent, a hard iron grey.

"**Oh, you think you're so me-damned clever, don't you?**" Irukandji demanded, his voice booming even across the gap. **"I'll just get right back in there. You can't keep me out. You have to sleep some time.**"

"Ked loves me," Azula answered. Even though the thing was a mile away and more, she could almost see the look of confusion on its face. She reached up to her brow, focusing the energy which flowed down from the morning sun. Not enough. She had to do something more. Invent something new. Jeong Jeong's way was limiting her, as was Ozai's. If she wanted to win, she had to develop Azula's style. Which demanded something a bit... insane. Fitting.

Instead of casting out the death beam, the concentrated explosion, from her brow, she swept it down, moving that concentration of force down her neck, then around her heart and into the pool of chi. So much power there. She almost never actually tapped it, but since she already had a waterfall of chi coming in at all times, why would she need to? She opted to use it now, anyway, dragging the whole contents of it back up and into her other hand. She braced her feet, slowly opening one hand, the energy coursing through her with such intensity as to be physically painful.

"**Oh, and what's the crazy bitch going to do... oh. Oh no.**" Irukandji said. And just an instant too late to do anything.

When Azula opened her hand, it did not release a concentrated explosion, no force crossing that distance snapping and popping every time it intercepted a mote of dust in the air or unfortunate low flying insect. It did not, because it didn't need to travel the distance. As fast as light itself, when she opened her hand, a beam of force, firebending so powerful that it bent the forces of nature around it, connected her to the rocky hill behind Irukandji, with a brief stop through the spirit's torso. The moment hung in the air, as the entire contents of Azula's pool of chi crossed that connection, which crossed the gap like some theoretical laser of light.

And then the island exploded. To say such a thing would have seemed preposterous, an exaggeration, hyperbole of the worst sort. But as she watched, there was a flash so bright that she actually had to cover her eyes; even so, she could see the outlines of the bones of her hand while she did so. At first, there was silence, as she blinked, _seeing_ that shockwave slamming outward, a glowing ball of destruction which ate the island in its entirety. And a second later, that's when the sound hit her, a blast like the ending of a world. She panickedly threw up a huge gout of percussive force, barely sheering away the destruction and sending it around her and the campsite well behind her. Then, the winds which had been trying to throw her onto her back reversed, successfully casting her forward onto her chest. She looked up, and a cloud like a growing, massive mushroom was rising up from the ruins of that island, which was now much smaller, much lower, much closer to the sea. That mushroom mounted up, and Azula couldn't help but wonder what sort of madman would plot the destruction of the world on the day of Sozin's Comet. To have more people with this sort of power? Terrifying.

Of course, it had taxed her brutally. She was drained, and she could feel the pathways of her energy weakened, strained to the point of shattering. If she were a lesser woman, this would have destroyed her ability to bend completely and permanently, moving so much energy at once. She was probably the only person in the world who could do that, and even still, if she tried it again tomorrow, she didn't doubt it would kill her. If she was alone in this capacity, then she considered the world extremely lucky.

"**And here I thought I managed to get ****away**** from people throwing nukes at my face,**" Irukandji snarked, standing behind her, essentially unharmed, his arms crossed. "**You people just can't seem to get away from loving The Bomb, can you?**"

Azula turned with a shriek, a scream, a roar. As she did, almost without any conscious effort despite her savaged pool of chi, she swung out a fist, a series of explosions so perfectly timed that she couldn't have controlled it knowingly if she'd wanted to, each of them focusing her punch into something which would put a hole through the Royal Flagship, front to back. The column of explosive force blasted the monster away from where he was standing over Ked without so much as mussing the Tribesman's coat. Azula stalked after the monstrosity, who calmly picked itself up out of the crater she'd driven it into, a tree slowly falling down nearby from the damage.

"**You do realize that shit just doesn't hurt me, don't you?**" Irukandji chided. "**I don't blame you for trying, though. It's not like you could ever do something to injure me.**"

Another lie. Even though, as Ked said, humans were mostly water, they could still drown. And he was almost entirely electricity. With another scream of inarticulate rage, she snapped forward a hand, and the energy begged for her direction. Lightning slammed out of her extended fingertips. She didn't force it out, she didn't divide that energy, she just knew more than anything in this world or any other that she wanted to strike this motherfucker with lightning. And the lightning was more than willing to oblige. The bolt, pristine and brilliant, slammed into his shoulder, slamming him back and sending him rolling again.

"**OW! THAT HURT YOU LITTLE BIT–**" Irukandji shouted. But Azula didn't even let him finish the word. She spun, pirouetting the way Ty Lee used to, and with every half-turn, as her hands drew even with Irukandji, a lightningbolt issued. She wasn't throwing lightning. She was just guiding all the hatred she felt, all of the anger, all of the... other things she didn't quite know how to classify yet, down her arms and into that spirit-thing. And with each lightning bolt, he screamed, his visage flickered. The fifth bolt was the last, as she glared up under her brows at the abomination. He shook his head, and the skin over where his eyes should have been opened up, more gashes than eyelids, and blue eyes stared out. "You worth**less c**hild, yo**u stu**pid, ignorant **monster**. I'**m go**ing to** hurt y**ou fo**r tha**t, little girl. You have** no conc**ept of how much I can** hurt you!**"

"And you how no concept of how little I care about pain!" Azula shouted. She was making it up as she went along; it was obvious even as she lost herself in the fight, which for some reason seemed more a dance than mortal combat. Every move flowed, not along military discipline and the courtly procession of target-focus-strike. No, this was light, like air over her skin on a warm day. This was what she was meant to be. So when Irukandji snapped forward his own hand, and a lightning bolt seared toward her, she didn't bother using Zuko's baffling ability of redirecting lightning. She simply covered her hand in snapping electricity and slammed his lightning bolt into the ground with her own.

She glared at this thing, which tried to strip her into nothing and devour her whole, this thing which called her irreparable, so completely damned that she would be his_ by right_, reducing her. She would not be reduced. Never again. As he twisted his hands around for a second bolt, she was already sprinting toward him, once again a roar of rage erupting from her throat. He smashed out that bolt of lightning just as she reached him. She pulled the lightning down her arm, under her heart, then back up into her other fist. A fist which she slammed into its face, over and over again, devastating it with its own lightning, the same lightning which was its existence. When his own lightning began to slam him in the face, she felt it begin to flow in both directions down that path she'd prepared, so every haymaker blow and rained-down punch struck with a thunderclap, pounding the thing harder against the humus, steam beginning to rise up around where she was beginning to boil the water in the soil and mud.

"I!" she screamed, punctuating it with a punch. "AM! NOT! A! MONSTER!"

The last blow she delivered was after she dragged the thing to its feet, and the brutal blow sent the thing flying away. She stood, panting, as she stared at it where it was lying on the ground. It didn't move. Well, it was breathing, but it didn't rise to attack her. After a long moment, she moved over and rolled the body over with her foot. The man, and she knew beyond all doubt that this was a man, not a god-thing inside a man-shaped container, stared up with rheumy blue eyes, tears flowing down his weathered, wrinkled cheeks. It was an old man, terror so clear in his eyes that it almost took her breath away.

"_Please, don't let him come back. He always comes back,_" he begged in Whalesh. The last month had honed her mediocre understanding of the language into something much more useful. "_I just want it to stop. I couldn't stop him. He's... I'm so sorry for what he did to you, but I couldn't..." _he broke off, weeping. Without opening his eyes, he just continued. "_Please, just... don't let him come back._"

There was a weight in her arms as she pulled them in that broad, circling motion. It was the Kata she was taught as central to the lightning bending form, its one real necessity. She had learned, today beyond all doubt, that it was a lie. But still, its deliberation and its rote feel gave her just a moment to think. She stared down at him, lightning dancing on her fingertips. "_What is your name?_" she asked, holding that lightning at bay.

"_Llawenydd_," he said. It probably meant something in Whalesh. She just didn't know.

"_Llawenydd, I forgive you,_" she said. Then, with a crack, she released it. As the man died, he slowly pulled his lips into a small, weary, relieved smile. She left him where he lay, a smoking hole in his chest. So many people died like that around her. Her mind went briefly to Kenta, a boy who she'd almost utterly forgotten, even though he... Ked.

She snapped out of her recollection the instant his name came into focus. She was running again, despite the weariness of her body, the frayed feeling all of the pathways of chi in her body held. It would take days to refill her pool of chi. She didn't dare try anything like what she'd done today until long after that. But right now, as she examined a memory of a decade ago, she knew how to do what she needed to without killing herself. She dropped to the edge of the cliff, where Irukandji had abandoned Ked. He was bleeding lightly from his ears, which was about as bad a sign as Azula ever cared to learn about. She turned him over. His breath was desperately shallow, his lips almost blue. His dark blue eyes didn't seem to focus on anything.

"You saved me. Now I save you," she said, pressing a hand to his brow, and feeling that energy flowing out of her. It wasn't the all-or-nothing tearing of her pool of chi being dumped into a single attack. This was slower, like molasses sliding out of a ewer. Brilliant white light erupted from her hand, so much like that explosion before, as she could see the outlines of the bones of her hand, but the light now was not harsh. It was warm. And it seeped down into him. She didn't know what it was doing. She couldn't. Once it left her body, there was no way she could think of to track it. But she felt... odd. Like part of her was now inside Ked. When his breathing evened, deepened, she pulled him a bit closer. Ked loved her. And that was worth more than gold or loyalty or fear.

* * *

Irukandji blinked, sitting up with a hand going to his forehead. "Ow. Hey wait. Reverb's gone," he inspected his hands briefly. "Heh, well ain't that something. I guess I finally got all that shit out of my system. I'm going to have to send that woman a gift-basket."

The God of Terror rose to his feet, cracking the various joints of his body to a symphony of clatters and pops. A symphony which continued long after he stopped testing his body's limits. It was odd. Eight years in that shit-hole, abandoned and lost, even to himself. He'd forgotten his own name, even. But now he was back. He was back and he was going to have himself some fun. Of course, there was one little problem. He felt himself begin kicked out of his host, and that connection severed utterly. That meant she must have offed his meat-suit. A minor setback, really. It just meant he had to find another dupe of a shaman to shanghai, and he'd be back in business.

"But where, oh where am I going to find another shaman at this hour of the night?" he said. He looked around. It was oddly dark. Like he was enclosed. He looked around, a bemused look on his face. Like he was inside a giant, rotting tree.

A bright flash stunned Irukandji for a moment, and a puff of smoke rose. Standing before the only exit into brightness was the Tribesman, Sokka Baihu. He was holding a bulky camera in front of him, and pulled out the print from the back. "Guess what?" Sokka asked. "I've got great news and terrible news."

"What's the good news?" Irukandji asked, taking a step forward. Baihu was a shaman. He would do quite nicely. And oh, the shock on Azula's face when he came back behind those bright blue eyes? Priceless.

"I finally figured out what I was screwing up with my camera," he said. Irukandji grinned, taking a step closer. "But that leads to the bad news."

"Which is?"

"This is an ambush," Sokka said idly. He looked past Irukandji and whistled sharply. That clattering sound descended from the ceiling, and as it did, the Tribesman reached behind him and pulled out a featureless wooden mask, setting it over his face. He must have crafted that while he was here. But where was here?

"Ah, one of the energy kind," the deep, resonant voice of Koh, the Face Stealer sounded. It's face, black with wide marks around the eyes and bright red lips, stared at him with a smirk. "I have always wanted to add one of them to my collection."

Irukandji's visage became as flat as a board. Literally. He simply erased all facial features he had. "Sad to say, it won't be today, Uncle."

"So you believe, but this Tribesman and I have had a very illuminating conversation," Koh chided. "You see, he and I had our little battle of wits. I found him, for a change, not to be lacking. So when he comes to me and tells me he wants to give me a shot at a dangerous, powerful, _OLD_ spirit... how could I resist?"

"You can't take my face," Irukandji was smirking on the inside. "Since I already don't have one."

"True, you don't now. But a moment ago...?" Koh turned to Sokka. The Tribesman flicked the photograph to the centipede like creature. The ancient spirit caught it between two claws, and that face in the center of its bulk began to grin, before the great eyelids blinked, and the face became something demonic, and it turned to Irukandji. "What a bemused look you have. On _my_ new face."

"Have fun, you two," Sokka said with a cheery wave, before winking out of existence. The mask he was wearing clattered to the ground after he left.

Irukandji sighed, dropping pretense and letting his facial features return. Koh loomed. "Well... bugger."

* * *

Ked woke up to a splitting headache, the likes of which he hadn't equaled since that night seven years ago when he'd stolen some of the old Hunt Wine from the back of Mom's pantry. It wasn't bad enough that Hunt Wine was of approximate flavor with fermented elk piss, but it had also gone off. Something he hadn't known until the next morning which he spent vomiting into the freezing ocean. He quickly empowered his own sweat to knock down his nausea a few pegs, his face pulling in confusion at the amount of harm he'd sustained. He felt beaten to hell, but it was all old injuries. How long had he been out?

"Don't try too much," Azula's voice came from nearby. He squinted, and he could make her out, sitting with her back to the tent flaps, and beyond that, the fire. It outlined her, making her visible only in silhouette. "The asshole decided that he was going to 'wreck the place' when he left. It was touch and go for a while."

"How long?" Ked asked.

"You were unconscious all day," she answered, quietly. But how many days? "We left Pulse yesterday. At least we skipped Raxa and landed on Corico instead. Raxa was a dump."

Ked nodded. The headache was passing. She stared at him. There was something odd about the way the light seeped around her cheeks. Like it was being refracted. "I don't even know what happened. I was _angry_... So angry... Did I hurt you?"

Azula shook her head. "I was afraid. It was a different kind of fear. Helpless. I don't like being helpless," she said, her voice very flat. Very controlled.

"Who _was_ that?"

"A ghost from my past. One I should have buried a long time ago," she said. Ked moved a bit closer, and he could see that she had been crying. Azula, crying? "You almost died. I don't know what I would have done if you had."

"Azula, are you alright?" Ked asked.

"Before, no," she said. She turned, sitting with her back to the yurt like structure they were now sitting in. She was staring at him, those golden eyes reflecting the light from outside. It was a sunset, igniting the sky and painting the world red. "You love me."

"I'm sensing a 'but'," Ked said.

"When you were hurt, it hurt me, too. It shouldn't have. And when... I don't know if I can say it. I don't know if it's what she always told me about. I don't know because I never had anything like it before," she growled, kicking at a mattress on the floor. "Agni's Blood, I sound like an idiot. I'm supposed to be coherent and eloquent. Not babbling like a mental patient."

"It might be the headache, but I'm not sure what you're saying," Ked said. He had hopes, though.

"I want you to stay," she said. He stared at her. "I don't want you to leave me."

"I won't."

She began to shift toward him, her eyes quite wide. "I want to believe that. I really do," her voice was still distant. "I want to know that I'm not alone, that I'm not a monster, that I'm not that worthless thing Ozai threw away without a second thought. And I want you to..."

The closer Azula got, the wider went his eyes. The headache fled as blood began to redirect to other areas of his anatomy. "Azula, you don't have to do this," he said.

"No, I don't," she said. Her eyes seemed to glow even as she kicked the flap down with an idle sweep of her foot. "I don't have to. But I want to."

"Are you... sure?"

"Don't deny me," she said, her tone wavering a little. "Don't push me away. Not now. Not this time."

"I don't want to hurt you," Ked said, his heart pounding a mile a minute. There was so much hope that it physically hurt, so much conflict that it burned. He couldn't take advantage of her, even if she said that she...

She answered his unspoken query with a kiss, her hands pulling him to her. It was desperate, it was enflamed, and even he could feel the need. She separated briefly, no words said between them. Now words even needed. He understood. He couldn't be conflicted right now. She wanted this, she needed this, and... "Do you... love me?" Ked asked.

Azula paused, staring at him. "I don't know. I wish I did."

When she moved closer again, as their breath quickened, as things followed the path which he had wished and hoped and screamed for into the night, he realized she didn't need to say it. Because he could feel it. Even if she didn't have the words, he would accept it, because that was what she was.

She loved him. Azula was in love, with the Water Tribe peasant from the back end of nowhere. It almost seemed impossible, something out of a fairy-tale. And yet with every pause, when she would stare down at him, he knew, that against all possible odds, against culture and society and... well, everything... the fairy-tale came true. Today, it was good to be Ked. And, he lacked the capacity to consider at the time, it was also a good day to be Azula.

* * *

Sitting in front of the fire, Bi watched as Azula kicked her tent closed, slinking toward the waterbender. She knew what the fallen Princess had on her mind, even from the partial glance she'd seen. Bi once had that look in her own eye, about a certain peasant fighter she once knew. Irukandji actually managed to do her a bit of a favor. Despite the shit-storm surrounding it, it still felt good to see Jet again, even if it wasn't real. She swished a bottle of bubbly, carbonated wine brewed one island over in Fallapa. If there was one thing Whales did right, it was wine.

She took a healthy swig of it, as she looked over to the other tent, which was about as far away from her as the first. Sokka and the airbender were in each others' arms, talking gently, sharing those lovey-dovey looks which Bi couldn't stand. But still, she felt a smirk on her face undampened by the excess of 'love' all around her. She quietly lifted her bottle toward the closed off tent, a short distance away next to its own fire. A she did, a light moan reached her. She felt a smirk come to her face. It was the Tribesman's moan, but that didn't stop her from saying: "Attagirl, Azula," with a salute, then a hard pull from the bottle. In an hour, the bottle was empty, and Bi was flopped unconscious, passed out alone on her bedroll. Alone, as always.

* * *

**First of all, well spotted when you noticed there was something off about Azula during The Runaway. You deserve a cookie. If only they could be sent electronically. And yes, her timing is absolutely impecable. **

**When I wrote Hatred Arc, I found that it ended up having three climaxes. The first, the action climax, is right here. It also showcases the moment that Azula figures out the lesson, the psychological breakthrough which defines Hatred Arc, even if she doesn't quite know how to enunciate it yet. The next two climaxes happen one to each chapter; next comes the emotional climax, and the ratification of the lesson. After that, the closure climax, and the utilization of the lesson.**

**When I wrote this chapter, I was amused at how the first section and the (second) last section seemed to book-end. They both end with Azula actually feeling good about herself, which is a long time coming. As for Ouzen, yes, he is related to Hotama. And trust me, there will be some delicious Toph/Azula interaction during Hope Arc. Now, you're probably feeling a bit hollow about Bi? Yeah, intentional. I've just about reached writing the end of her story arc (which ends in Hope). She might have cute and funny moments, but consider even in Canon, what Smellerbee is. A child soldier. That never ends well. I just give her, like everybody, the best chance that they're ever going to get. It might not be the ending that some would have writ for her considering all that's going on, but it was the one which made the most sense to me. **


	15. The Princess

**This, along with the fight in the previous chapter, were both something that I had plotted pretty solidly even when I was still doing Fear Arc. Of course, because of the way that the story evolved as I was writing it, the events and the specifics had to change a bit to suit what had become of the story. But to counter what seems to be a trend in my reviews; no, Azula is not unstoppable. Against any single opponent outside of the Avatar (Who can merge elements to make them more effective than even the most skilled utilization of one element alone), yes, it'll be an utter curb-stomp. But when you put her up against an army, there comes a new problem. Target saturation. Azula has buckets of stamina, granted, but she also fights about twice as hard as most soldiers would. If she paced herself, she could be standing without difficulty after hours of fighting, but because she never does anything half-assed, she tires just as quickly, as a whole rather than an absolute, as any soldier would. It's just that with that same amount of time elapsed and state of exhaustion reached, Azula's gotten a lot more done. There is also one other factor she has to worry about. She might be powerful, but she's still human. One rogue arrow to the eye, and that's it. Anything can happen in battle. There's a reason why generals don't tend to lead from the front.**

**This does not negate the fact that Azula is a 5'8" Zeruel with a much smaller magazine. Just puts it in perspective. If the technology were in place, after what she did, Azula would have instantly became a nuclear non-proliferationist.**

**The next couple of chapters deal with Bi a bit more than usual. Which is fitting, because her part in this story is really coming to a head. I also figured out why it's so easy to pair Sokka with Azula. They're both highly intelligent and ruthlessly pragmatic. Both firmly believe that they live in a rational world, and find themselves at a loss when this proves not the case (which is very frequently if Sokka's involved).**

* * *

Ked felt boneless. Boneless, tired, and a bit dehydrated. And as he slowly moved back up through the layers of dream, into a reality which surpassed them all, he felt just a stab of worry. Like this was too good to be true. Doubly so since Uncle Bato had been very clear about what to expect of things which seemed too good to be true. But when his eyes slid open and he was staring at waves of lustrous, tangled black hair, it started to sink in that this was reality. This was not fantasy or the construction of a delirious mind. She pulled a little closer to him. As they were in the northern reaches of Great Whales, in what was summer in the south, their combined heat made the tent quite cozy, even without a source of heat.

"Are you awake?" he asked.

"I have been for a while," she said. That tugged at Ked a bit.

"That was..."

"Better than I had anticipated," Azula said, turning to look up at him with those golden eyes. Gods, he could die a happy man this morning. Wait.

"Better than you anticipated?"

"I had fairly low expectations. Lots of blood, tearing. More screaming from me. Less screaming from _you_," she said flatly.

Ked felt a sinking sensation. "Should we have done this?"

"I can't change what Ozai did to me. It's time I moved past it," she said simply. Then, a smile, small and unsteady, came to her face. "Bear in mind that just because I had low expectations doesn't mean it wasn't good."

Ked ran a hand down her back, tracing the uncountable ripples and lines of the scars. "There might be a bit of a problem, though. If Sokka finds out, he might... force the issue."

"What?" she asked, a brow rising.

"Well, any shaman can perform a marriage back in the South, so..."

"Marriage? Really?" she asked, a smirk on her face. "And you're one to talk. I'm pretty sure they heard you in Grand Ember."

"As I said," he said, reddening from embarrassment, "something you might want to be aware of."

She smirked. It sent a chill down his spine in a way he couldn't say he really disliked "And if I wanted marriage?" Ked didn't have an answer for that. She patted him on the cheek. "Why look, I've made the Tribesman speechless. Calm down, I'm not going to pin you down for the next twenty or so years."

She rolled away from him with a bit of a sigh. He frowned. "Twenty years? Are marriages supposed to be until death?"

"In my family, no," she said, pulling on clothes. Inwardly, he begged her not to. To stay beautifully naked forever and ever. But common sense kicked that part of his libido aside for the time being. "Mother's didn't last long. Uncle Iroh's wife died fairly early. Both of Grandfather's wives died within twenty years, each. Marriage in this family is a death sentence, usually for the woman. Forgive me if I'm in no hurry to rush into the civil bonds of matrimony."

"I didn't think you believed in curses," Ked pointed out.

"I also thought I was an unlovable monster and that you were less attractive than Chan. Needless to say, I'm reexamining my belief systems," she said matter-of-factly. She casually threw him a pair of pants.

"Good. It hurt when you tore into yourself like you did," Ked nodded. She gave him another of those small, uneven smiles. It was so different from the way she usually did, tight-lipped and cherubic. Or else a superior smirk, or most dangerously, a harsh grin. It was as genuine an expression as she knew how to give. And it melted his heart. "So what now?"

"Now? Now, I am going to have a long, embarrassing, slightly uncomfortable conversation with somebody who loved me unconditionally for years," He raised a brow. "Other than you." Azula smirked with a chortle. "She always said that she wanted to hear all about my 'first time', and since I don't want her to cry, this will have to suffice."

"...Really?" Ked asked.

"In a way, it is," her eyes grew distant for a moment. "It's the first time that I've _wanted_ it. The first time I _asked_ for it. The first time it wasn't filled with hate and pain, at least, with a man. So yes, I think it counts as a first."

"I'm digging at a tender wound, aren't I?" she raised a brow at him. "If it helps, it was mine, too."

She was about to say something, but she stared intently at him. "You're telling the truth. Odd. I thought virgins were supposed to be clueless."

"Not virgin Tribesmen," he admitted. Then, what she had said caught up with him. "'With a man'? Wait, does that mean...?" She was already walking out, and didn't pause to answer his question. Even though she was facing away, he could tell she was smirking. He shook his head. "What a woman."

He wouldn't even call it a transformation. Azula hadn't changed, she'd just... blossomed was a word which she would probably hate to have associated with her, but he could think of none better. She had been denied her birthright, her talents, her potential, by the hate and abuse of Ozai. And yet here she was. Whole. He couldn't restrain his grin as he hastily pulled on clothing himself. He was only a few moments behind Azula.

The brightness of the sun made him blink for a moment. He could see one of Bi's boots sticking out of her tent nearby, probably still passed out drunk. That was something he had to do something about... if he got a chance to. Azula, on the other hand, headed straight for the airbender, a distinctly satisfied look on her face. The tattooed acrobat took one look at her, and her brown eyes went very wide. She was about to say something when Azula hooked her arm around Ty Lee's, and started dragging the airbender away. Her heels dragging in the dirt, she looked back to her husband. "I guess I'm going with Azula," she said brightly.

Sokka had a baffled look on his face when Ked went to his side. He poured himself a cup of tea. "I wonder what they're talking about?"

"Probably your little escapades, last night," Sokka answered evenly. In shock, Ked sprayed tea onto the fire. Sokka smirked. "Don't worry. I'm not going to marry you two. Besides, she'd probably blow me up if I tried."

"If she didn't want it, anyway," Ked said. There was a moment of silence, then Ty Lee's excited squee tore through the air with such volume and intensity that it drove both men back a step.

"I'm trying to sleep!" Bi slurred from her tent.

Sokka laughed at that, trailing off slowly. "So. First time, huh?"

"Don't make it sound like that. Azula's a hell of a woman. That's the way it's supposed to be, right?"

"Oh, definitely," Sokka said. "I remember how I lost it myself."

"With who? Some girl you met on your travels, I assume," Ked said, rolling his eyes. Sokka instead motioned with his cup toward the moon, creeping lower on the horizon. "What?"

"Hm? Oh, I had sex with the moon."

"What."

"Yeah, for about five months on a nightly basis," Sokka nodded. Ked glared at him.

"With the moon."

"We-e-e-e-ll, technically it was Yue, but since she's the moon now, I think it fits. More or less," he sipped at his tea, looking at the path which lead around a hill, to where Ty Lee's excited voice could be half-heard.

"You had sex with a goddess? With _my_ goddess?" Ked asked, not quite able to parse it in his mind.

"A-yup," Sokka said. And with a big grin, he turned to Ked. "And that means I win."

Sokka walked away, to where the sky bison was rubbing against a tree to scratch an itch. Ked just shook his head, his mind rejecting the notion of that bully sullying his goddess. "You're an ass," was all he could say regarding that topic. And he was punctuated by another joyous squeal from the blasphemous thug's wife, as she talked to his lover. Ked's life was weird.

* * *

**Chapter 15: The Princess**

* * *

Zuko sighed as Azdi made his ambling way back into the throne room. The fires were as always snuffed, leaving the wall sconces to drop a mellow, unimposing light. "I'm assuming that you didn't get lost, because you probably know this palace better than _I_ do. So tell me why it is you've managed to intrude on _yet another_ war-meeting," Zuko said, cutting off the ad hoc ambassador to the Fire Lord from the Azul region. It was astounding how quickly the chain of command fell to Azdi, a lowly House Investigator, to be Azul's voice in the midlands. If Zuko didn't know his wife's people better, he might have even called it suspicious.

Azdi looked around, at the aged generals, and the fresh-faced youngsters who found themselves battle-scarred and bloodied far too soon. One colonel, sitting as near to Zuko as station would allow, was only twenty three years old, and already a nine-year veteran. "I've got some bad news from home," he said. "This might require a more delicate..."

"Clear the room," Zuko said, quietly, but brooking no hesitation or countermanding. The older generals, those who had amnestied out of Ozai's upper echelons after the Weary War, looked unimpressed. Those younger showed no comment. It was a product of the times. Ozai let people into his inner circle on curried favors and bribes. With Zuko, the only coin he accepted was achievement or potential. The generals cleared out quickly enough, leaving Azdi and Zuko alone, with the large map of the western part of the West Continent stretched between them. Zuko stared at Azdi. Azdi stared at the map, a smirk on his face.

"Well, according to that, we've already lost the war," Azdi said, looking at the wave of blue which covered the map. Oddly, Azuli colors were purple rather than red, yet another distinction between the peoples. The placards for Azula's army were stretched far and wide, the vast majority of the southern reaches of Azul blanketed in soldiers. "Of course, you know what they say about Azuli at war."

"Annihilation before occupation," Zuko nodded. Azdi smiled. Before Zuko, it had been thirty years since Azul was given more than lip service. "Everybody's gone. What is it you came to say?"

"_Do not react, leader male of burn,_" he said in barely passable Yqanuac, his tone sounding outright bored. "_A killer stands in the shadow of my ass. Seek him not._"

"That would be unfortunate," Zuko said, as though answering a different utterance.

"Indeed. But worse, Azul has fallen," Azdi poked one of the purple placards away with a toe, letting it skitter across the smooth black stone. Zuko's eyes widened.

"The House or the city?" Azdi just gave him a flat stare with bright grey eyes. "Of course. The city."

"Montoya Azul managed to get out of the city during a break in the siege, and took his family with him," Zuko sighed, rubbing his head, forcing himself not to look around the room at the person who was any moment now going to try to kill him. "That means the last meaningful structure for the Azuli military is now in exile. Which, admittedly, is a bit embarrassing."

"I'm going to send some people to find them, bring them to safety," Zuko pledged, but Azdi shook his head with a dismissing wave.

"Unnecessary. Montoya brought a battalion of Gurkhas with him," Azdi said. He started walking along the map, his eyes locked down. Zuko actually let out a laugh, at hearing that.

"Well, in that case, the war's over, Azula's lost," he said sarcastically, but only a little. While Azuli assassins were famous, Azuli Gurkhas were legendary. Much of the reason attributed to the loss of momentum in the war effort toward the end of Azulon's reign was his alienating the Azuli, and losing access to the Gurkha. Azdi cracked a grin at that himself.

"If only we could live up to our reputation. We almost can," he shrugged, "but then again, we are not all Wang Fire, so we have to make do."

"Yeah, you really brought him in, didn't you?"

Azdi smirked, his hand sliding toward the boomerang-like khukuri knife he he kept at his hip. "Azul knows well enough that Wang Fire does not exist, save as an alter ego for that Tribesman you favor. But he serves a purpose, and the young man's endeavors exemplify the will, perseverance, and reputation of the Gurkha. But that should remain between us," Azdi said. With a flick of his wrist, he spun and hurled his blade up at one of the pillars behind him. It landed wetly, and a surprised, clipped grunt sounded. There was a creaking sound, then a hard thump as somebody fell out of a harness to the hard, unforgiving floor, the blade still stuck out of his side. Azdi smiled back at Zuko, pulling a second, smaller but similar weapon from his other hip. "The war does not go well, but it could be worse," Azdi said, walking over to the would-be assassin. Zuko joined him, staring down at the man. His eyes were clenched shut, but Zuko instantly recognized the parchment complexion of the northern East Continent.

"I guess your rumors were true. She does have have resources from the East," Zuko said. It made him sink a little inside. For so long, he had just wanted his sister to wake up, to look him in the eye again. And when she did, it was at the head of the army that was trying to kill him. He knew he should have felt betrayed, but he just felt... like he was a bad brother. He looked to Azdi. "I suppose you'll be wanting some privacy?"

"If you don't mind," Azdi shrugged. "You seem the squeamish type, and you might not like what's coming. You know what they say about the Azuli."

"They say a lot of things about the Azuli."

"Yes, they do," Azdi said.

"No torture."

"What?" the man asked, as though demanded something preposterous.

"I'm not Ozai, and I am not my grandfather. This is a new day, and I will not have that blood spilled under my jurisdiction," Zuko leaned in on Azdi. "Is that going to be a problem?"

Azdi sighed, then pulled the blade ungently from the would-be-assassin. The man let out another pained groan when Azdi did. "Very well. I'll just have a nice, long conversation... see what that shakes loose. Is that more to your liking?"

"Don't push me, Azdi. You are ambassador at my patience and privilege; make sure you don't exhaust either," Zuko said, turning to walk away. He _would_ be a better man than Ozai. No matter what it cost him.

* * *

It was well into the afternoon when Ty Lee finally exhausted herself of conversation. Not that Azula begrudged her that; it had been a very long time since she'd been able to speak with the woman like that. For all the years that had separated the two of them, Ty Lee didn't seem to have changed an iota, which was helpful, because the years in stasis had rendered Azula much the same. There were things Azula wasn't telling the acrobat, though. Not because Ty Lee didn't need to know, but because telling her would constitute an act of assault, and she was not going to hurt her friends anymore. That was a promise she made to herself, and intended to keep.

The rest of them were getting packed up, and were going to walk the bridge to Fallapa. They could have easily enough flown, but the Bridges of North Whales were supposedly one of the wonders of the artificial world. Four islands spanned by bridges, from Torius at its most southwesterly, to Raxa, just west of Pulse, with Fallapa and Corico bordering each, respectively. Odd, how she had been raised to believe nothing forged outside the narrow confines of the Fire Nation would ever amount to anything, never be worth attention or praise. She had been so ignorant. So misinformed.

As the others worked to prepare themselves for the walk they had ahead of them, Azula sat in the yurt, which was emptied of everything except a mirror, which she propped up against a back wall. She stared into it, seeing herself. Her eyes were gold, but not as pristine as once they were. Now, they were just a touch darker, with something like a ribbon of amber moving through them. Scar tissue. The line running alongside her nose was fading quickly, and when she leaned in, she could see that she was beginning to have wrinkles at the corners of her mouth. Wrinkles, at twenty three.

She ran a thumb along her black hair which pooled on the ground behind and around her. Every time she looked at herself, she could see her mother, not just in her face but in her style. Azula was not her mother. She could never be Ursa, just as she could never be, and _would_ never be, Ozai. She flicked the bangs which hung down around her eyes, and shook her head. It was time to accept that, to move on. It was a tendency which she had been pushing aside for a long time now. It was time to grow up.

Reaching down to a razor blade, she held it right near her roots and with a sharp tug, separated the bangs in their entirety, leaving the black hair on the ground. She then pulled up the long locks and began to manipulate them, as easily as breathing, the training she'd had in the upkeep of her hairstyles years before coming back without even conscious awareness. She spun the long strands, building them onto themselves, forming a mass not unlike a beehive on her head, held in place and supported by the weight of the hair itself. She sunk a pin into that mass, locking it where she wanted it. From the bottom of that hive, the rest of her hair spilled down to the middle of her back, the rest of it vanishing into the complex of precise swirls, with just a sweep of it crossing her brow, tucked behind one ear.

She observed herself again. She was not the child who had grown up in cruelty, the broken doll that Ozai wanted to turn into his faithful, unthinking weapon. And at the same time, she was not the woman who had killed the Fire Lord to protect her beloved children. She was Azula, her own woman, with her own path. And as a small, uneven smile came to her face, she pondered that at least she wouldn't need to walk that path alone. She folded the mirror along the hinge down its center, locking it with a soft click; it shouldn't have surprised her that Ty Lee would hold on to the mirror Azula had used during the Infiltration of Ba Sing Se as a memento for seven years.

She emerged from the yurt, and pulled away the one stick which was holding it upright. The entire thing collapsed behind her, all its component bits sliding past each other until the entire skeleton of the 'building' was in a pile on the ground. She stared at it for a moment. The polite thing would be to gather it up, stow it on Basu. Azula didn't quite feel up to being polite. Not quite yet. A smirk came to her face. Besides, she had somebody more than willing to do it for her. She turned, "Oh, Ked?" she asked. The shorter of the two Tribesmen perked up, swinging to face her. "Would you kindly pick up the last tent?"

Ked burst out into a grin and ambled past her, gathering up the shelter. She gave him a pat on the cheek when he passed, and made her way to the bison. She was not afraid to admit that the creature made her at least a little uncomfortable. She had spent entirely too much time trying to kill one of its kin to feel like she had any place riding one. "Are you going to get on or just stare at it?" Bi asked from nearby.

"I thought we were walking," Azula asked.

The other woman rotated an arm, wincing as she did so. "Yeah, and thank the gods for that. Still, I figured somebody soft and squishy like you would probably want to have something else do the walking for you," she pointed out with a smirk of her own. Azula just stared at her.

"I've traveled farther in my sixteenth year than you likely have in your entire life, and much of it was afoot," she said. Bi shrugged.

"Doubt it. Still, if you get a blister and start bawling, expect me to just stand over here and laugh at you."

"If I 'bawl' over something like a blister, then you will have my permission to laugh," she said dismissively. Oddly, Bi reminded Azula quite a bit of Mai, albeit the Mai who Azula knew a long time ago. Back when Mai was still being crushed under the weight of her family. The Mai who just wanted_ some way out_. Ty Lee, leaning face-first onto the beast's brow, said something into the fur, then pulled back, just as Ked easily hurled the entire compacted yurt onto the beast's back.

"Alright, that's everything?" Ty Lee asked. There were a few nods around her, then she broke into a grin. "Come along, Basu!" she said, and the big fuzzy creature let out a deep, bass bellow, shook itself vigorously enough that one of Ked's cherished tomes flew off the howdah. Azula caught it easily enough, without even needing to break her stride, and tucked it under an arm. Then, the beast started to plod with them.

"You've got your barbarian well house-trained, I see," Bi intimated. Azula shot her a glare, but couldn't keep the smirk off of her face. "And here I thought you were just joking about snapping off a piece of the South. I can't blame you. It's pretty spectacular, ain't it?"

"Ked was and is a trusted confidante," Azula said, not lying in the slightest. It was odd to be able to trust again. "And that is a rare resource for me. In my life, I could count on one hand the people I have ever trusted, and fully half of them betrayed me. I do not trust easily."

"Well, you must have _trusted_ him if you got naked with him," Bi pointed out.

"You seem to have your own problems with trust," Azula said, shooting a sideways glance to the unclean, obviously unhealthy Easterner. "And I appreciate the irony of being the one to point it out."

"I trust people as far as I can throw a knife," Bi said with a shrug. And with a bitter tone. Azula rose a brow. Ever since she'd gotten the whole of her mind back, she found she could actually pick out those little signals that had eluded her before, those signals which showed when people were hiding something, when they were lying to her... when they were concealing something from themselves.

"That's a very grim way to live," Azula said. And again, she understood the irony of being the bearer of this sort of opinion. "Not much of one, I dare say."

"You've got a problem with the way I live?" Bi asked, her tone suddenly harsh, a scowl on her face. "Well tough shit. I've lived my entire life being hunted by people like you. So forgive my intrusion on your delicate Fire Nation sensibilities for being appropriately paranoid."

Azula just stared at the woman for a long moment, then shook her head. "It's like looking back in time," she commented.

"Alright, everybody playing nice?" Sokka asked as he loped back from where he had been keeping pace with the airbender at the front of the odd train. He bore a wide, foolish grin, one which Azula could tell was his masque, playing the fool to make others assume he was.

"Why? Are you going to bend us over your knee if we aren't?" Azula asked casually, a smirk on her face.

"I'd have to clear that with my wife," Sokka said smoothly, not rising to her baiting. "But she might agree to it just to see the look on your face when you get a paddling."

"I assume that Ked didn't tell you what Ozai did to me," Azula said flatly. Sokka shrugged.

"It's none of my business. As long as you're not trying to kill me or anybody I care about, then I've got no problem with you. And _by Tui and La_ that felt weird to say to you," he started to move back to the front again, but paused, casting a glance over his shoulder. "I like the new 'do. Makes you look like less of a psychopath."

Bi scowled at that, and turned to look at Azula again. "You didn't notice my hair, did you?" the firebender asked.

"Pft. Like I give a damn about hair," she said, scratching at hers to a fall of dandruff.

"That is obvious even from a distance," Azula said. She tilted her head. "But I don't see why. Even with a modicum of care, you could have decent hair. Instead, it looks like you attached a dead shrub to your head."

"What do you know about hair, anyway?"

"Top grades," Azula said flatly. "Anything I put my mind to, I excel at."

Azula rolled her eyes, and glanced behind her. Keeping up the rear of the group was Ked. Her confidante. Her... lover. It was odd that she now had a place for that word in her mind. It settled in her cognition so unsteadily, like a concept from a foreign culture, spoken of but never seen. When she moved closer to him, and he noticed her approach, he brightened up like the sun had suddenly come out. But being as this was Whales, it was pretty much overcast all the time, everywhere. It was no surprise that the people looked like they had crawled up from under rocks – and even as she thought that, she recognized how cruel it was. Best to keep those sorts of thoughts to herself.

Did _she_ really have that affect on him?

"I like what you did with your hair," Ked said, forcing himself to be calm. She could almost sense his tension, like he didn't want to say the wrong thing. That confused her somewhat. Hadn't he already gotten what he wanted of... she caught herself. That thought came from a place which was distinctly unhelpful. Besides, he would no doubt want to be in a position to have that sort of sensation again. And most importantly, he had given her a thoughtful compliment. She smiled slightly at that. "And I like it when you smile like that."

"What?" she asked.

"That little smile," Ked said. "It's _my_ smile. I don't see it anywhere else, and I like it."

"I see," Azula said, rolling her eyes lightly.

"For once _I'm_ the one behind the ball on where we're going," Ked admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. "So... where exactly are we?"

"The Klom chain, four islands connected by bridges. Right now we're headed to Fallapa, which has one of the two _proper_ cities on this chain. The other is on Torius. Raxa is agreed by most to be something of a backwater," she said. "As I understand it, we're heading into civilization because our fearless leader Sokka Baihu is finally convinced that nobody is waiting in the shadows to try and kill me, and by me, I mean all of us."

"Nice save," Ked said.

"I am out of practice."

"Sokka's... not what I expected," Ked said frankly. "His sister was, but she was always a bit of a thug."

"Ah yes, Sokka," she said. "He was the bulwark against which the greatest plans in a generation crashed and broke. Only I was able to outmatch him, and only then, because I had a year to prepare for the encounter," Ked gave her a suspicious look. She shrugged. "He has an unexpectedly quick mind."

"Compared to...?"

"You want to have sex again, don't you?" she switched gears. So suddenly, in fact, that the change in topic physically tripped the Tribesman up and sent him to his face in the dirt. She smirked as he picked himself up and dusted himself off. "Well?"

"Right this instant?" he asked.

"If that is your means of example."

"I'm just a bit confused."

"You still consider me appealing, I can tell by the way you look at me. I was just..."

Ked just shook his head with a small smile of his own. "You don't get what 'I love you' really entails, do you?"

"Admittedly no."

"It means yesterday, today, and tomorrow, however many tomorrows I get," he said. She frowned.

"How could you possibly know..."

"Wow. Your family was _really_ screwed up," Ked said. Azula had no choice but to agree with that. He loved her. That concept just kept bouncing around inside her head. It made her feel oddly warm, like she was sitting in front of a warm fire after being out in the cold so long that she was almost utterly numb. She suddenly broke into a predatory grin.

"So that means your answer to my question is 'yes', correct?" Ked let out an exasperated sigh. "You are far too easy and entertaining to tease."

As Ked shook his head, muttering something in his native tongue which didn't sound too scathing even with her absolute ignorance of Yqanuac, she couldn't keep that smile off of her face. Despite everything, for once, it was a good day to be Azula.

* * *

Unlike the nondescript little towns which covered the chain, the city of Fallapa on the Island of Fallapa – because the Whalesh seemed to be _terribly_ creative – stood over the terrain, looking down toward the ocean in the distance, as though willing itself not to be a port town out of sheer stubbornness. If there was one good thing about it, it made for a great many, good quality roads leading into the city, a fact for which Bi was intensely grateful. She was sick of walking through mud. She'd had enough mud to last a lifetime by the time she turned nine, and then had fourteen more years of it thrown at her for good measure. The Baihus had both departed on their own, to what end, Bi couldn't really say she cared. The post-coital royal and her barbarian doxie also split off, heading through the markets. At least those two had the decency not to be sickening about their affection. The whole thing made Smellerbee a little nauseous.

Either that, or it was the hangover.

This was not the first time she'd come to Fallapa. The last time, it was with Longshot, five years back. It had been here when he looked her in the eye and told her, using those words he so seldom employed, that he couldn't keep going, that it was killing him. That he needed out, now, or never. And just like that, Smellerbee was alone. Jet's gang gone, scattered to the wind, dead, imprisoned, or adopted into families, as their ages permitted. Jet dead. And then Longshot, her last link to the only life she ever knew, severed.

"Are you going to buy something, or are you just going to stare?" the bowyer asked, stirring a pot of glue. She snapped back to reality. Larking off like that was going to get her killed one day. She looked at the contents of the shop. Bows, most of them local construction, of one strong bit of wood. Some of them were the Si Wongi compound bows, the sort which Longshot had always wanted to get his hands on, but the same reason he didn't get one back then applied now; as exotic goods, they were extremely expensive. And people carrying exotics tended to have very capable guards.

"I think I'll just stare," Bi said, before she turned away. Rickety towers, mere scaffolds for banners that flapped in the light breeze, proclaimed the approach of the Winter Solstice festival. Of course, they called it something else, both since south of the equator the season was technically approaching the heart of southern summer, and since the Whalesh were just weird that way. Something about the Brutalization of Saint Adam, or some such. Bi moved a bit away from the bustle and sat down on a bench, scratching at a hard-to-reach spot on her back. Oh, that old ache was in her bones again. It came and went, much like the itchiness. She didn't give much thought to it, though. She had more immediate problems to concern herself with.

She looked around. Five years hadn't changed much. She could still remember how it had gone down. She and Shot had been sitting at a bench, much like this one, she nursing a hangover, he brooding. Not that one would be able to easily tell; Shot didn't say very much at the best of times. He turned to her, and let out a long sigh.

"What's on your mind, Shot?" she asked him.

"This isn't working," Shot had answered, aloud. Hearing him speak was still so infrequent an event that it drew her attention quickly and completely. She gave him a glance, tinted by the insufferable pressure trying to explode her skull from within.

"What isn't?"

Shot shook his head, giving an encompassing glance which said 'all of this. All of what we're doing.'

"Well, we've gotta keep going. Somebody's got to keep up the fight."

Shot sighed again. "I can't."

"What?"

"I can't. I know I can't," Shot said. He reached to his back and extracted his bow. He set it down on the ground beside the bench, as though he couldn't even look at it. "I need... something else."

"Shot, don't do this," Bi said. Begged, maybe.

Shot shook his head, and his dark eyes looked up at hers 'you know that I'm right, even if you aren't going to admit it to yourself', that look said. But what he actually said was "Come on. We need to stop this before it kills us. One way or another."

"No," Bi said. "I promised Jet I'd see this through to the end. It's not finished. _I'm_ not finished!"

Shot nodded, slowly. "I am," was all he said. His look was all apology, battered and weary, but he said "We had a good run, but I have to go. Don't ask me to stay. Please."

Bi just stared at her last comrade, her oldest remaining friend. And then she sneered. "Fine. You want to bitch out, then that's your option. But somewhere, Jet's going to look up at you and know you for the coward you are," Bi said, unable to contain the hurt, the anger. The dread. "I can't even look at you."

"I hope you find what you're looking for," Shot said, then he got up and walked away, pulling his pan hat over his eyes and vanishing into the crowd. Bi had sat there a long time, stewing in her own anger, before she noticed that he had left his bow behind. In a fit of rage, she stomped it with a foot, snapping the stave into flinders.

And that was the last time she saw Longshot.

She really could have handled that better.

If memory served, she then lost a week to a binge of self-destructive drinking which landed her in a hospital in Kad Deid for a couple of days in a coma. After she broke out of there, she went north into the Fire Nation, and the rest was history. As she had previously considered, there were better ways to deal with that sort of thing. She wiped a hand over her face, and was a little dismayed when her fingers came back bloody. Gods damn it, her nose was bleeding again. She pulled a mostly-red rag from her pocket and started wiping it away. Like she didn't have enough problems.

Bi got to her feet, dabbing away the blood as it came. She'd sat around belly-aching about the past more than long enough. She was supposed to be the tough one, the one who pointed and laughed at those soft, weak wusses who bawled and bellarooed about their stupid little problems. Oh, I'm Azula! I'm a frigid bitch who can't trust anybody! Oh, I'm Ked! I'm in love with an oblivious chick and don't have the balls to do something about it! It was a solid relief that those two had finally gotten horizontal. The sexual tension was beginning to grate on Bi's nerves.

She ambled to a stand which promised the finest wines in Whales. Of course, that would be hyperbole, because those particular vintages tended only to be sold in Kad Deid. But Whalesh wine was Whalesh wine, and the price was right. "A bottle of fizzy wine," she demanded, slamming her money down on the stall's counter. The woman behind it took one look at the money, then back up at Bi. The red-haired woman shook her head.

"You've had enough to drink from the look of you," she said, pushing the money back at Bi.  
"I'll decide when I've had enough!" Bi shouted, shoving the money back toward her. "Now get me what I'm paying for!"

The stall-keeper nodded toward a sign in Whalesh nailed to the supporting beam. It took Bi two tries to read it, because written Whalesh was left to right rather than the other way 'round. It stated clearly that she held the rights to refuse sale to anybody. "This is no way to run a business," Bi said darkly.

"You need medical help, young woman. Spend your money there," she said, pushing the money back one final time. Smellerbee glared at the woman, then grabbed her cash and shoved it back into her pocket. The hell with her. There were other places to get booze in this city. She shook her head, her expression that of a thunderhead preparing to drop lightning. So enraptured was she in her little revenge fantasy that she walked straight into a taller man with a scruffy, unshaven beard.

"_Watch where you're going, you stupid bitch!_" he shouted at her in Huojian, glaring down with burning golden eyes. Bi just sat there in the street, looking at him. He gave her one last moment of glare, then stalked away, a scowl on his face. No. Impossible. There was just no way this could be happening. And yet, as life loved to screw her in every opportunity that arose, here he was. She got to her feet, against the protestations of her joints, and began to follow after him down a back alley between two massive buildings.

"I must be insane. There's no way that was actually..." she muttered to herself, but the next time she saw him, there was no doubt left in her mind whatsoever. "Fire Lord Ozai..."

At one end of the alley, Azula was standing, her face gone pale as a koala sheep. She seemed paralyzed as she beheld her father, once Fire Lord, once Phoenix King, standing at the heart of the alley. The world seemed to hold its breath.

* * *

While the din of the city continued behind them, for Ked, the world had fallen into silence. Well, almost silence, because there was chuckling coming from the man in front of him. And he could almost hear something coming out of Azula, a sound that his rational mind wanted to dismiss. A hissing sound.

"Well, imagine my surprise to see you here, my darling daughter," Ozai said, ignoring Ked out of hand. When he called her that, that hissing sound grew a little louder. He took a step forward. Azula took a step back. "Oh, not going to give your own father a proper welcome?"

The simplest way of saying it was that Ozai looked like a homeless man. He'd probably not shaved since Azula banished him more than a month ago, probably not bathed in so long a time, either. "Don't call yourself that," Azula said quietly, glaring murder at her father.

"I wonder what you are doing in Great Whales," Ozai said with a baiting tone, running his fingers down his scruffy, untended beard. A smirk came to his face, under burning golden eyes. "Oh. Oh, I see. You're worried that your brother might call in for outside aid, as you did, and you're poisoning the well before he gets her. Bravo, Azula. That is the sort of foresight which I laud in my favored child."

"And if that assumption weren't correct?" Azula said, her tone very low, very tight. That hissing sound which might be entirely in Ked's imagination seemed to get louder and louder, more and more ominous.

Ozai scowled for a moment, then a more vile smirk came to his face. "Unless you are going to undercut him by securing their alliance yourself, first. Oh, that is a scheme I hadn't seen coming. There was one thing which I always appreciated, my darling daughter, it was your ability to surprise me."

"Stop calling me that," Azula said slowly, like the drawing of a blade. For the first time, Ozai looked utterly baffled.

"What? That you are my darling daughter, my chosen vessal? The one woman in this world that I know I can trust?" he asked. Azula took one long stride toward Ozai, and Ked caught her arm. She glared back, and that hissing mounted even higher for a moment as her glare swung to him. After an instant, though, she nodded, the tension reducing, even if not departing. Ozai caught the exchange, and scowled darkly. "What is this? Associating with the filth? I taught you better than that."

"You are _not_ my father," Azula said flatly, glaring hate at her progenitor. Ozai scoffed, but there was a look in his eye, one which was distinctly uneasy. And Ked could finally recognize that sound; it was the hissing of a fuse, just before it slipped inside a barrel of blasting jelly.

"Azula, my dear, your bastard brother's pedigree might be in question, but yours never was," Ozai said harshly. A smirk came to his face. "As I understand it, your mother was even more enthusiastic after that affair, once she'd returned to my side. A traitor in the court, a whore in the bed, and a failure as a mother. You were a distinct improvement over her. What? Are you going to claim that my brother sired you as well? I think you'll find that is a much harder sell than it was for that treasonous whelp who unseated me."

"You're making three fundamental mistakes of assumption," Azula said with one of her characteristic smirks, one hand reaching behind her, grasping a wagon-spoke. "First, Zuko did not unseat you. I saw those documents. You were never Fire Lord, not legally. You unseated yourself when you abdicated. Second, and I've needed to say this for the _longest_ time," she her smirk vanishing into naked hatred. "**I HAVE NO FATHER!** No father would ever do what you did to me."

"I don't understand,_ my darling daughter_. You're not making any sense."

Ked felt a lurch in his stomach. That was a key-phrase. He was trying to tap into some sort of psychic programming. But, the tribesman noted, it didn't seem to be working. Or perhaps even showing the opposite affect. Azula took another stride toward her sire.

"And your third error in judg–" she interrupted her own sentence, mid word, to slam that spoke hard into the side of Ozai's face, cracking his jaw and sending him to the ground. She stood over him as he glared up, hand to his cheek. "–_ment_, was that you thought you could wait for me to stop talking. You... bastard. You didn't think I'd find out? That I wouldn't remember?"

"I don't know what you're talking about, my dar..."

Azula kicked him in the diaphragm to shut him up. "When your spy saw me using firebending to heal Kenta, you decided that this wouldn't stand," she said. When Ozai tried to get to his feet, she kicked him in the chin again, this time breaking his jaw and sending him slumped against the wall. "So you took me aside, and told me how disappointed you were. And when I tried to make you see reason, to try taking a different course, you had me drugged. Dragged into the wilderness, and beaten. When that wasn't enough, you started to use me to garner political favors with your lackeys," she continued, her words growing louder and angrier with every passing moment, until she started punctuating them with kicks to her sire's chest and face.

"Azula..." Ked said.

"Not now, Ked!" she shouted. She turned her glare back to Ozai. "How did it feel, prostituting your own thirteen year old daughter's body? Did it feel good? Did it feel better when there was nobody around, and_ YOU USED ME YOURSELF_?" she shrieked, striking Ozai so hard with that spoke that it snapped. "Did it make you feel powerful when I kept begging you to stop, until my voice gave out from screaming 'I don't want this'? And when it seems like you're not breaking my will fast enough, you hunt down Kenta, drag him in front of me, and tell me I can end all of this if I kill him, right there. And that's when you started to hate me, wasn't it? When I wouldn't kill this nobody, this peasant, just because you _ASKED ME TO?_ So you had _Jeong Jeong_ kill him for you! Jeong Jeong, the only one who _wouldn't_ touch me! What did you do to _him_, I wonder? How did you break _his_ will?" Ozai, jaw broken, was in no condition to answer, but Azula was on a roll and nothing short of the world ending in the next five seconds was going to stop her now.

"I know you're trying to control me again, like you did all those years. Like you did on the day of Sozin's Comet, made me just OVERLOOK what you'd done to me in the bath! Like you tried to do in Betla! And when I wouldn't obey, you _beat_ me until I was_ bathing in my own blood_!" she broke off, letting out a low growl and glaring at her father. "What sort of man does that? What sort of human being has that in him? You're not a man. You're a monster. _You_ are the monster you tried to make me believe I was. Did it feel good, sitting with your _oblivious_ little prostitute at your side, with all your smirking generals and admirals, knowing they'd all known the same carnal..."

"Azula stop!" Ked shouted, pulling her back. She spun toward him, her fist erupting into ragged, horrible blue fire, but she caught herself before she did anything. She stared at him, those glorious eyes of hers quivering, growing damp, her lower lip pouting out just a little. "Please, don't do this. Don't go there again."

Tears began to flow, and she pressed her eyes shut. She quivered bodily from the rage she was feeling, but she stopped herself. He wondered if she would have been able to do this a year ago, a month ago, even. But hers was not the only rage. And when Azula's outburst began, that hissing sound hadn't yet vanished.

"He's not worth your time," Ked said harshly. "He's nothing."

Azula nodded, pulling him close for a moment, before taking a step away. And that hissing, he realized, wasn't coming from Azula. It was coming from him. Ked reached down, tearing water out of his flask, and ignited a glowing hand, dragging Ozai to his feet as he forced his healing through the despicable man. Azula's eyes went wide as Ozai's jaw reformed itself.

"What are you doing?" she demanded, a note of betrayal in her voice. Ked answered her question with a haymaker punch, with enough force behind it to break Ozai's jaw again. Whereas Azula's beating was punctuating her words, Ked's was distinctly less structured, as he roared a thousand profanities and curses in his native tongue, raining down blows on the man who had tortured the woman he loved, made her dreamscape a minefield of nightmares. He kept shouting and kicking and punching until he broke his hand on Ozai's face, leaving the latter a mangled ruin, and the man, a broken husk, gasping for air over broken and missing teeth, and only through there, because his sinus was filled with blood. His eyes were swelling shut, and what little schlera could be seen was more red than white. And Ked wasn't close to being done with him. He wanted to inflict every cruelty on this man, all the pain he had given to his own flesh and blood, all the terror, all the misery. But he couldn't. Because Ked was not a monster.

"I wanted it to be fair," Ked said, shaking the pain out of a broken fist. It had been a long time since he'd laid down a Benell-bully level beating. And this had outstripped that by an order of magnitude. "Didn't want him to die before I was done," he finished. He looked up, as he heard clapping from the other end of the alley. Smellerbee was shaking her head with a grin, clapping slowly.

"Well that was entertaining. Don't see a beat-down like that everyday. So... was all that true?" she asked. Azula's shudder was all the answer Bi got, or needed. Ked placed his hands gently on her shoulders, and turned her away from the beaten-bloody man who had the audacity to call himself a father.

"Come on, Azula. It's over."

"I know," she said quietly. "Why can't I stop shaking?"

As Ked helped guide Azula out of the alley where the beating had taken place, he saw Bi moving to stare down at Ozai. Ked didn't know what the 'freedom fighter' was thinking about, and at the moment, he really didn't care. She pulled her cloak a little tighter around herself, even though the dim and the damp was for the moment not full-out raining. He took her to the closest public house, which was an extremely upscale establishment probably intended for people who made more money in an hour than Ked saw in a year. He was considering what lie he was going to have to come up with when the desk clerk smiled up at him.

"_Mister and Missus Baihu I presume?_" she said brightly in her chirpy Whalesh. "_Your usual __room is being held. Please, follow me_."

"_Yes, __Sokka_," Azula said with a tone so saccharine that it almost made his teeth hurt. "_Lead the way, loverboy._"

Ked leaned closer. "That's your Ty Lee impersonation?"

"Yes, it was. Why?"

"Maybe you should leave the impersonations to your brother," Ked said. She rolled her eyes and they were guided past splendor to the rooms, which were on the second floor and sported a decent balcony. Azula didn't bother exploring the rich, dark wooden structure, instead, slumping down next to the door, her hands pressed into her face. Ked squatted down in front of her. "Are you alright?"

"I'm not sure," she said, not bothering to hide the quaver in her voice. "I didn't think I would do that. I got so... so out of control. I shouldn't be like that."

"What you did made perfect sense," Ked said, shifting over to sit beside her, drawing her close to him, even though his broken hand protested. He could heal that later. "I'd be worried if you _didn't_ blow up at him, after what he did. I was only surprised you didn't kill him."

Azula let out a bitter laugh, but that little smile appeared on her face. "Maybe I'm just a better human being than he was," she said.

"Of that, we are in perfect agreement," Ked said, and then planted a kiss in her hair.

* * *

There was a sensation of being drained, one she didn't really understand. Ked said it was natural, though, and she... well, she trusted his word on such matters. Even hours after that chance meeting with the man she once considered 'father', she still felt tired, battered, and weary. It didn't help that she was still recovering from that unspeakably powerful... whatever it was she'd done on Pulse. That still stunned her a bit. Using nothing but fire, she unmade an island. It was a good thing no technology existed that could create devastation on that scale.

The two of them had sat there, by the door, in relative quiet, for a good long while. And when Ked got up, she found herself dragging him back down to the floor, intending to land him on the bed, but not quite reaching that mark. Unlike the previous night which was gentle and warm and slow, this was a great deal more frenetic, energetic, and tiring. But in its aftermath, she felt... renewed. Like she had finally looked into the abyss, and when the abyss stared back, _it_ blinked. Ked looked quite pleased with himself, if a bit baffled, when she suggested that they head down and get something to eat. Especially since they weren't the ones who were going to be paying for it.

Thus it came to be that Ked and Azula sat opposite each other at the rich, dark table that rested before the great pane windows that looked out onto the boulevards of Fallapa, eating the most costly delicacies of Great Whales out of Sokka's purse. "Well, I'd say today was all around a decent one," Azula opined, looking leerily at an odd, red, insect/rat-like thing on a platter.

Ked sighed at that. "Do you want to talk about..."

"There is nothing left to say," Azula cut him off, pushing that thing which looked like it was staring at her away, and helping herself to another slab of the dense, layered pasta which the Lhasagna Inn was apparently famous for. "That man deigned to cast his shadow across the entirety of my life. Until now, I lacked a certain level of closure in that I never got to tell him what he deserved to hear. He sired two children, but raised neither. He is father to nobody," she paused, looking up at him. "Unless..."

"I'm not going to tell you you need to have a 'healthy' relationship with your parents," Ked said, reaching over to snap the tail off the insect thing, which draw a rising brow from Azula. What an uncivilized food. The rain began to pick up again, pattering against the window. "Lots of people don't. Dad hated his parents, and he turned out alright," Ked began to strip the meat out of the tail. "And forgive me for using the example, but your brother didn't..."

"My brother had a father. Iroh. I had nobody," she corrected. She sighed, feeling a pang of shame. She swore so long ago that she would protect Zuzu, and the best she'd managed was a few tidbits of decent advice around heartless manipulation and attempted murder. Mama would be ashamed of her. And more pointedly, she was ashamed of herself. "I was so envious of him when he came back. He was getting stronger, he could bend the blue flames; it was like he was everything I was, but better."

"What?" Ked asked. "Forgive me for saying, but..."

"Alright, that was a lie," Azula admitted. "And I'm not even sure why I said it. But regardless, I knew that the stronger he became, the worse that made me by comparison. The only way I knew how to shine was by standing against the backdrop of those who couldn't measure to me. Alone, I was... rudderless."

Ked just nodded at that. "Self-esteem is a tricky thing. It's hard to build in a place like that, with people like... _him_, constantly tearing you down."

Azula felt a smirk come to her face. "You almost beat him to death. Why?"

"Because he deserved it," Ked said.

"Ked..."

Ked sighed, pushing the food around on his plate. "Because he hurt you. I don't like anyone hurting the people I love. It makes me into a person I don't like to be," but Azula smiled at the admission.

"I've never had somebody willing to do that for me before," Azula said. "I've always been the only one to fight my battles."

There was a wet thump against the window, and Ked started almost out of his chair at seeing an enthusiastic airbender pressing her entire body against the window, a big grin on her face. "AZULA!" Ty Lee squealed, before taking off so fast that even the rain couldn't keep up with her. She appeared at the side of their table so quickly that she might as well have teleported, if not for the bow wave which threw the contents of quite a few of the intervening tables onto their respective diners. The firebender didn't even have the chance to widen her eyes in surprise before she found herself tangled in a hug with her face trapped in the suffocating embrace of Ty Lee's bosom. "We were so worried! You didn't come to the square like we said and we thought you might have gotten lost or robbed or maybe fell into a well and drowned or..."

"Tng Lmph! Mm smphktphmn! Mm kmngh brmph!" Azula mumbled in momentary alarm against Ty Lee's chest, before the women parted, Ty Lee standing with her hands behind her back, looking like a contrite teenager. It was about this moment when the many other patrons began to understand what strange hell had befallen their quiet, sedate dinner. Azula took a deep breath, wondering if Ty Lee was going to be this protective for the rest of her life. "May I ask what brought forth that reaction?"

"I was worried," she admitted. The clamor of other patrons began to rise, but she just turned to them with a bright grin, and they all realized that getting angry with her would be like kicking puppies. Sure, it would be effective, but nobody was willing to be that sort of unpleasant degenerate. "I mean, it's been so long, and I just got my friend back. I already lost you once."

"Don't you think she'd be alright with me?" Ked asked. Ty Lee looked at him, then back to her, then back to Ked. "What?"

"You had sex with her before I got here, didn't you?" she asked, grinning broadly. Ked stammered, turning slightly red. Azula laughed aloud at that, seeing the comedy in how flustered he got. It felt very, _very_ good to laugh. Especially today. "So. How was it?"

"Can we please not talk about this?" Ked asked, rubbing the back of his neck.

"You know, for a Tribesman, you're a bit of a prude," Ty Lee said, leaning back. Her big dark eyes went wide when they fell on the red thing Ked had torn in half. "Oooh! ROBSTERS!"

Azula nodded toward the acrobat, who was now very happily sucking meat out of the claws of the creature. "I think I finally understand why Ozai fell so precipitously," she said, the notion growing in her mind, ideas spinning together and growing like a vine. "He used fear as his weapon. And in the short term, fear is effective. It creates control. For a while. But there is a limit, a level of absolute terror at which people cannot become meaningfully more afraid," she paused, eating some of Lhasagna's famous dish. "Once they reach that level of Absolute Terror, all of that fear begins to turn to hatred."

The crowd let out another dismayed cry as another burst into the dining area, dripping wet, although not with such velocity as to send food, centerpieces, and patrons flying. He was breathing heavily, his hands on his knees, as though he'd just sprinted the length of the city, and he very likely did trying to keep up with his other half. "Ty... Lee... What... the hell?" Sokka asked between gasps. One patron of an adjacent table threw up her hands and stormed out in a huff, allowing Sokka to commandeer her chair and spin it toward the table for two which now seemed to seat four once Ty Lee plopped herself in her spouse's lap. After a brief period of trying to get his wind back, he seemed a bit restored. "Alright. Feel alive again. Would you mind telling me why it is you're eating dinner at my favorite hotel in the Klom Chain, as me and my wife, on _my_ tab?"

"It seemed funny," Azula said, sipping at her wine.

"Absolute Terror," Ked said, nodding. "I think I understand."

"There is _nothing_ more dangerous than the hatred of one's subordinates," Azula continued forcefully. "So while fear easily creates control, it is only delaying insubordination. Insurrection is inevitable when the only means of control is via fear."

"Which is why your father pretty much created his own opposition," Sokka said, instantly getting what she was implying. "Almost everybody who joined Zuko's amnesty did so only after already attacking the Ozai Loyalists during the days of Sozin's Comet. They'd reached Absolute Terror, and looped around into resentment."

"Indeed. Control via fear is a failing strategy, children playing at a game they don't understand the rules to. The only loyalty which works is..." she hesitated, trying to find a different word to enunciate it, but only one really worked. "love. Show them that they gain glory in your victories, that you will suffer in their defeats. Show them that you are part of them, and they will have reason to fight at your side even when times are desperate."

Sokka said something in his own tongue, which Ked nodded to. He then translated. "Fear drives people apart; love, together."

"Precisely. Easier to control the people through fear, but if you want to have any chance of building something that lasts, something that deserves to persevere, only loyalty through 'love' has any chance," Azula said matter-of-factly. "And that is why Ozai failed."

The door slammed open once more, admitting a soaking-wet Smellerbee into the room. At this point, pretty much all of the patrons were grumbling angrily and leaving, before something even worse disrupted their dinner. Bi had a lopsided grin on her face, and she walked as though not entirely sober. She made to sit down at the table next to theirs... and missed, landing on the floor. "Well, that's everybody," Sokka said.

"Had myself a little adventure," Bi said. "Couldn't just leave Ozai to drown in the gutter. That wouldn't be right."

"Did she just say Ozai?" Ty Lee asked.

"She's drunk, honey."

"So what did you do to him?" Ked asked, his brow drawing down. Bi perked up at that, grinning wide.

"Well, as I see it, dying would have been entirely too good for an asshole like him, so I dragged him to a guy I met last time I was here. A tattooist," she let out a laugh. "He and I shared a bottle, and I told him what Azula here ranted about. Needless to say, he was not impressed."

"Wait... Ozai is really _here_?" Sokka asked, pulling Ty Lee close as she grew pale.

Bi smirked. "Mm-hm," she confirmed. "So Heilyn – and a more appropriate name, I _cannot_ imagine – decided that Ozai should live, just like I did. But we made a little alteration."

"What did you do?" Sokka asked.

"We tattooed 'rapist' on his face," Bi said with a grin. "In five languages. Good luck, Ozai. You'll need it."

"Rapist?" Ty Lee asked, her eyes wide, but then they filled with tears and the firebender found herself getting tackle-hugged again, this time with the acrobat bawling into Azula's shoulder in sympathy. Even as seeing her oldest friend weeping was viscerally painful, that she would react this way warmed Azula's heart a bit. It didn't stop Azula from glaring at Bi.

"What did I do?" the royal asked.

"I wasn't going to tell her," Azula said darkly. "Because I knew that it would hurt her."

"Oooh. Right. Yeah, I didn't see that coming," Bi muttered, scratching at an odd bruise on her neck.

"That's because you're a drunk and an emb..."

"Azula," Ked said, giving a glance toward Ty Lee. Azula looked down at the woman who was now feeling all of the sympathetic pain that the acrobat had been kept out of the loop for; it had been done for her own good.

She nodded. "Very well. It's alright, Ty Lee. I'm better now. I've moved on."

"I'm sorry I didn't see it," Ty Lee said. "I'm sorry I wasn't there when you..."

"You can't blame yourself for this. It wasn't your fault. There was nothing you could have done. This was the work of an evil man; it's no failure of yours that it happened," Azula said. And even as she spoke, she knew she was not speaking solely to Ty Lee. "Come on. It's dinner time and you must be starving. We've got enough food for eight, so two Tribesmen and a drunk should pick up the slack.

"I'm not a drunk!" Bi shouted.

All eyes turned to her.

"I'm drunk right now, aren't I?" she asked, unsteady even though she was sitting down. Ty Lee split off from Azula, and they all pulled chairs around the table. Even now, it was still probably the best day Azula had ever had. Azula looked at the group, which had somehow wormed its way into her trust. Ty Lee, faithful even in the face of attempted murder. Sokka, willing to look past everything she'd done to him. Ked, who loved her. Even Smellerbee, who showed a loyalty that, had it stood against her in Ba Sing Se, would have made failure of her victory; vitriolic, but steady and firm.

Azula had no father, and her mother was lost to her... but she had a family. It was an odd sensation.

Ty Lee perked up suddenly and without warning. "So I hear they're having a big party in Kad Deid in a week or so! A Solstice party!" her voice bright and cheerful again, all sign of weepiness and pain vanished completely. "We should go! BIG PARTY!"

Sokka laughed. "I believe the airbender has spoken," he acknowledged. He pondered for a moment. "You know, our group should have its own name. With Aang, it was Team Avatar. But with you..."

"Oh, dear lord," Ked muttered.

"The A-Team!" Sokka cheerfully proclaimed. "'Cause her name is Azula and... What?"

Azula gave a glance to her lover with a wan look. "If I hit him hard enough, will he stop talking?"

"If only," Ked answered. Then, the group began to eat.

* * *

**Robsters are copyrighted Tony B. They enjoy baseball. Of course, in Scion, they were much bigger.**

_Leave a review._


	16. Reunification

**I was somewhat surprised this morning to hear that Distorted Realities has been officially abandoned. That's sad, because it was a good story and in fact inspired me to begin the Children series, especially after the execrable movie. It's a shame it couldn't have been seen through to the end, but that's the way things go, sometimes. Well, enough harping about somebody else's work.**

**Regarding Ozai: Yes, he's disturbingly evil here, as I mentioned when I was writing Book 3. But consider who the man was in canon. He was a grown man who was willing, and I dare say eager, to brand a thirteen year old boy, who was also his son, for daring to show a hint of conscience. A man who mutilates his own child doesn't have very many other levels that bear exploring, I claim. And if he's willing to do that to his son, just imagine what he'd do to his daughter if she ever defied him?**

**Azula is 'having a vacation' as it was stated, because she is simply not ready to go back yet. She could not explain why, but for a while now, there was just a sense that if she went back, it won't go well, because she wasn't done repairing her mind yet. That will change. Finally, if anybody has interest in making fanfiction of my fanfiction, by all means do so. I can think of little more amusing than creating a Nobody Dies-esque expanded universe. There's plenty of room for it, considering how I gave Season One a kiss and a wish, basically. But if you're going to do that, then somebody better Trope up the series, if only so people can see where everything connects.**

**Fine. I admit it. I'm just hoping to get Troped. Anyway. Finale of Hatred Arc. Writing the finale of War of Flames right now. Enjoy.**

**And I couldn't resist doing this:**

* * *

"I'm telling you, I got here first! The first one to take a spot gets to sell things on it!" the old man screamed at the top of his lungs, his complexion gone quite bright red. Although, Shun had to admit, her own mother was in no better condition. She had to restrain her mother so that she wouldn't hurl herself bodily at the cabbage vendor. And similarly, that vendor's grandson seemed to be doing the same.

"I don't see your name on it! I sold here yesterday!"

"Well, I sold here all of last week!" the two screamed back and forth at each other.

"You wouldn't know good produce if it burst into flames!" Hatsou railed, grabbing one of the cabbages that fell onto the ground and throwing it, hitting its salesman in the head. The man's eyes bugged out wide, and he bent to grab one of her fallen radishes, but his grandson was a voice for reason.

"Gramps, don't do this! Remember your blood pressure!"

"I'm going to give that woman a thrashing she'll remember until the walls fall in Ba Sing Se!" the old man answered loudly.

"Well then, no wonder I've forgotten it already because that already happened!" Hatsou retorted, a triumphant grin on her face. Shun sighed, slumping her shoulders slightly. Was it going to be like this _every_ morning?

"I will destroy you!" the cabbage merchant roared.

"I will destroy _you_!" Hatsou countered, straining against her daughter's restraint to try kicking at the old man.

"Agni blast us, mother! This is too much!"

Ever since Mother decided to avoid the civil war in the West and try selling her produce in Great Whales, it had been an endless procession of this. It was almost as though to these two, the Weary War never ended, and they continued to battle it out, but their battleground was paved in vegetables. She shared a look with the green-eyed young man who was holding his grandfather back. There was a shared look of mutual embarrassment that passed between them.

"I'm taking this spot!" Hatsou shouted.

"Too bad! I've already got it! Hah!" the old man said, pulling free of his grandson and doing a triumphant dance in the spot which she was dead set on getting. Shun couldn't understand why she was so fixated on _that one spot_. There were dozens of open spots all over the place today, what with most of the people away celebrating in the squares and households. It wasn't even like they had to pay for them.

"Mother, come on, let's just leave this crazy old man to his cabbages," Shun pleaded.

"No. This is a life lesson, my little radish. You can't give an inch to your competition, or they'll take you for a league. I am not going to give that man the satisfaction. Not today!" she declared, one fist raised as though declaring war on cabbage-kind. Shun and the man's grandson both palmed their face in dismay.

The old man readied himself, his eyes narrowing. He moved to the front of his cart, which was blocking the road for a good fifteen minutes now as the two of them argued over who got this spot today. His lips curled and he was about to speak when an outcry rose from down the street, loud and commanding.

"Stop them! Don't let them get away!"

Both Mother and her competitor both had their eyes go extremely wide as a woman vaulted over both of the wagons in a bound, before turning and casting a golden gaze back whence she came. First one Tribesman, then a second skirted around the both of them, jostling the carts badly, and causing both owners to shriek and scrabble to catch the falling vegetables.

"MY RADISHES!"

"MY CABBAGES!"

The fourth was an airbender who zipped along the wall. "Come on, Azula! They're gaining on us!" the airbender said before returning to the ground and running onward. The first one looked back and her bright red lips pulled into a cunning smirk, before she too ran down that street, turning the corner and vanishing from view.

The two competitors stared at each other, arms full of almost-fallen produce. Then, there was a clatter of steel, as a woman in rag-tag armor was bounding around, four of the local samurai trying to get a bead on her with their swordbreakers and jitte. She kept them all at bay with a pair of weird looking swords. The fight raged up to them, then around them, as the samurai and the swordswoman flowed around each other and their surroundings, a panoply of sparks and noise hitting the air, but otherwise, disturbing nothing. The woman turned suddenly and kicked one of the samurai right in the groin, and as he fell, she sprinted after the first, fleeing foursome.

Mother and her arch nemesis both shot a pale-faced glance to each other.

"You can have it," both said in the exact same instant, and likewise, began bodily hauling their carts away from that cursed spot as fast as their respective bodies would take them. Shun shook her head, slowly. And when she looked up, she could see that the old man's grandson was doing the exact same.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi. Um... I'm Wen," he said uneasily.

"I'm Shun," she said.

"Our families, am I right?" he said, rubbing the back of his neck. He really was fairly attractive, in an Eastern sort of way. He had quite lovely eyes.

"You know, I've been thinking. That... maybe you and me should go... engage in an activity... some time?" Shun attempted, cursing herself for not paying more attention in class and learning useful Tianxia. That, and sounding like a first-class idiot.

"Are you asking me out on a date?" Wen asked.

"I guess I am," Shun admitted.

"I would be honored. Let's get out of here before we turn into our parents," Wen suggested. He took her hand, and led her away from the madness of the Festival of Saint Adam.

* * *

**Chapter 16: Reunification**

* * *

Azula squinted somewhat, trying to get a better look at the thing which sat suspended in the fluid-filled tube, lit from flickering torches set around it. Ever since Betla, she found herself having a harder time seeing in the dark, as well as the problem with headaches at the end of the day. She frowned, and tilted her head to one side.

"So what's the final call?" Ked asked, taking a bite of the deep-fried festival food in his hand. "Is it the vanguard of an invasion of aliens from another planet? Or perhaps an eldritch horror from beyond the veils of the Spirit world?"

"It's a bear," Azula announced.

"That doesn't look like any platypus bear that I've ever seen," Ked said with a frown of his own.

"I didn't say platypus bear. I said bear," Azula leaned back. "I've only seen one before, and that was a long time ago, but I haven't forgotten what they look like."

"Kinda... small to be a bear, isn't it?" he asked.

"It's a cub. And it's shaved," she said. And she tilted her head again. "It's also upside down."

"Ah, well. Hard to get any sort of entertainment value out of a festival which allows neither gambling nor alcohol," Ked said. He followed her as she exited the tent, shaking her head. It felt quite odd to be doing things so... mundane. And stranger still, enjoying them. She had always considered herself a woman of refined sensibilities. Still, the simple pleasures still sung on a impoverished palate. Ked called it 'their second date', which was a bit backwards, considering that she'd already fornicated with him. On several occasions, no less. Dating was a very Eastern notion, one even Ked was not completely versed on.

Of course, no amount of intellectualization could dim that little smile she was wearing. Just today, just this once, it was almost like she was normal. Like everything that had happened to her, hadn't happened. It was a foolish fancy, counterproductive and dangerous. Trying to cling to that very belief had almost destroyed her. But still, there was just something about this that seemed to tug at Azula in a way she didn't know could be tugged.

"So what's all of this about?" Azula asked, looking out at the scene before her.

"Aliens or spirits?" Sokka asked, joining them in a flash. Ty Lee was busy, off a short ways away performing various acrobatics for the people at the festival. Not because anybody was paying her, of course; she simply wanted to.

"A shaved, pickled, upside down bear," Ked answered.

"Gross. I might have to go in and see it," he said. He nodded toward where a float was moving slowly through the town. Atop it was a man made of straw, dressed in the clothing of a sailor ashore. "And as for your question, that's Saint Adam, one of the founders of Great Whales. Posthumously named the First Emperor."

"So this is some sort of ancestor worship?" Azula asked.

"Not exactly," Sokka said. He pointed again, and people began to surge from the crowd and pick up sledge hammers on the cart as it was pulled along, and beat the hell out of the straw effigy. "It's a reenactment of how they killed the guy. Beat him to death with hammers. Very grisly. And _actually_ not very historically accurate."

"That's barb..." she cut herself off. She wasn't sure if the word was appropriate. Especially given her companions.

"Yeah, it is sort of barbaric," Ked agreed. "But then again, even the happiest festivals the Whalesh have are at least a little bit dreary. Comes with thousands of years of being stomped on by pretty much anybody who puts their minds to it."

"Right. Adamism was pretty much the first thing that Whales could really claim was culturally their own. And even that's been fading away over the last couple of centuries," Sokka agreed. "At least they've still got a secular aspect to it, what with Adam being the founder of the country as it stands today."

"Fascinating," Azula muttered, paying just enough attention to sock the information away in the off chance that it might become useful at some point. At this point, the people were now throwing each other off of the cart and onto the street in their enthusiasm to pound the stuffing out of the effigy of their founder. "This has to be one of the strangest customs I've ever come across."

"About ten years back, Aang, my sister and I came to a town which burned the Avatar every year," Sokka said with a shrug. "The world can be a very weird place."

Bi looked quite annoyed, but then again, having no beer and very little to do since she wasn't Whalesh enough to pound Adam with a big hammer – and it did seem like an enjoyable if mildly blasphemous way to spend one's afternoon – she was relegated to muttering darkly and sticking close to Sokka's side, like a sickly, inelegant facsimile of Mai, if one much less well armed. "Can we go do something else? I've seen all kinds of dead things in jars. There's got to be something better to do with our time."

And Azula knew exactly what that something was. She had been pondering it for a while, now. More and more since she finally had her mind under her own control, and it was coming to a head more recently still. The War of Flames continued in the West, her brother fighting an impostor who danced on Jeong Jeong's strings, and she didn't doubt that Long Feng was pulling _his_. And she was not without responsibility, there. Her actions had some small part to play in igniting that civil war. That meant that it was her mess to clean up. And the longer she pondered at it, thought about it, procrastinated about it, the more it gnawed at her.

She was going to have to go back.

Azula looked up, having to squint against the sun. Ked said there was something about the way the islands nearby sat that pushed all of the dreary weather away from Kad Deid, making it the only livable place in the entire archipelago, in her humble opinion. It felt good to be warm, here in what amounted to their summer. It had been a while since Azula was warm. Ked's hand slipped into hers, and he pointed at another contortionist who was trying to out-contort Ty Lee. "One of those two is going to emit a loud crack in a moment, I'd bet cash money," Ked said.

"It won't be Ty Lee," Azula said with a degree of confidence. "There's something we should talk about."

"What is it?" Ked asked, instantly on his guard, his hand squeezing slightly. "Did I..."

"It's nothing you did," Azula said with a roll of her eyes. For all he was the 'stable' one in the relationship, he freely admitted that he had never done this sort of thing before. And by times, it showed. "I've come to a decision I should have admitted to a week ago."

"Being?" Ked asked. Sokka was now amongst the crowd staring no small bit lustfully at the National acrobat and airbender. The local Whaleshman had his own following, albeit of the opposite gender. Bi just liked like she was in a mood for kicking kittens.

"I started a war in the West. It's time that I ended it," she said. Ked's eyes grew wide.

"Azula, have you thought this... yes, you thought this through," he answered his own question, rolling his own eyes with a scowl. "Are you sure this is a... of course, you've considered if it's a good idea," he growled. "Would you mind walking me through your thought process?"

"I promised my mother I would protect my brother. Until now, I have been roundly failing at that task," Azula said simply. "Even though much of this would have happened with me as an insensate vegetable, there are parts of what happened which fall on no other shoulders than my own. It is time that I returned home and stopped that war. The Fire Nation has suffered enough. I don't have much to work with, but what I do have, I know I can trust. If I must fight Jeong Jeong and Long Feng with nothing but this group of four at my back, then I consider myself fortunate for having even that."

"You've really been ruminating on this," Ked said, nodding as he grasped her reasoning. It was refreshing having somebody she could talk to who didn't need things explained to him as though a child. "And I can't see any flaws in your reasoning. But you need to have a plan if you're going to just 'stop a war in its tracks'."

Azula sighed, as her meandering course took her to one side of the festival courtyard, under the Palace of the Eel, an oddly named venue all things considered. "I'll admit, it's provisional at best. I need to get into contact with my brother, and somehow convince him that I'm not trying to kill him. That might well be the hardest part of this. After that... I guess I'll have to come up with solutions to the problems I face as I face them."

Ked nodded, and an odd hush fell over the entire crowd. Even the contort-off broke down when Ty Lee's opponent slipped out of a position which ordinarily any man capable of assuming would logically never leave, and fell to his knees. The others around merely had their heads dipped low in supplication as that quiet rippled back. Azula shared a glance with Ked, who shrugged his own ignorance.

Azula looked around, then up at the balcony which overlooked the square. The great doors to the cathedral opened, and somebody wearing flowing silver robes and a bright, metal mask emerged, staring down at the crowd. Azula turned to Ked. "Isn't that the Empress?" she asked.

"I guess it is," he said with a nod, staring up like Azula at the woman. Then, his eyes widened and he clapped a hand to his brow. "Right! She's leader of both church and state!"

"Like the Fire Lord used to be," Azula offered.

"Exactly. Of course she'd be expected to officiate on a religious holiday," Ked was staring upward, as was Azula, and nobody else. The silence was deafening. The Empress swung her face across the vast sea of Whalesh, past Azula, and to the other side of the crowd.

"My children!" she began, and her voice seemed oddly familiar. But then, the Empress' gaze swung back, and her arms, once up in a supplicating gesture, latched onto the railing of the balcony, and her shining silver mask locked onto Azula's gaze, staring at her. She stared, almost as though in shock, and the people around her began to mutter in confusion.

"What's going on?" Ked asked.

"_It cannot be_," the Empress whispered, carrying the distance only because of the relative quiet of the crowd. And when she whispered, it was not in Whalesh, but Huojian. The woman leaned further, casting a finger down at Azula. "_Azula_?"

Azula locked eyes with her paramour, and uttered a single word.

"Run."

* * *

The pounding of the drums was almost blinding. Most would use the term deafening, but since the woman at the head of the procession was possessed of atypical senses, the terms could be used interchangeably. Toph Nǚshén Beifong grinned. She only tacked that middle part onto her moniker because who _wouldn't_ want to have 'Goddess' as part of their name? It was only appropriate. That, and people were trying to turn her into a divine presence already. It was a bit odd, having people believe you were descended from the vaults eternal because you sat in a particular chair. But still, it was far better to have somebody she trusted – herself – in control than have to dink around with politics.

And all it took was a few wise words from the Cool Old Guy, prolific use of beatings by the clue-stick, and her own shining personality. The East had been without any real representation for a long time. She just wondered how long her streak was going to last. Not the best thoughts to be carrying into her coronation.

Toph stifled a yawn as the mandarins went on and on about her life before bothering to make a grab at the throne. A lot of what they said was utter bullshit. Stories invented to make her seem larger than life. And that annoyed her. Especially since they tried tried to marginalize those parts of her life which actually happened, and were more than awesome enough to make her seem like she was a God's kid. Who else on this planet could bend _metal_? Nobody, that's who! There was only one thing which she actually managed to control, and that was the royal portrait. It was still in the works, but she had been _quite_ specific about what it would contain.

"Man. If I'd have known it would take this long, I would have taken a nap before getting up here," she muttered.

"Careful. You're not looking very Earth King-ish right now," Aang chided, grinning widely. As the Avatar, having him here to oversee her ascension actually made her the first Earth King in a century to actually follow the forms of Succession. The Royal Courtyard / Gardens / Landing Pad had been cleared for the occasion, and a great number of not only delegates from those many nations who supported her ascension, but quite a few of the locals were in attendance. She made sure that Aang dropped the invites for the after-party, stamped with her personal seal, exclusively in the Lower Ring. Keep the stuffy buggers out of her party. Of course, for all her 'sight' was good, she couldn't even see the end of the crowd.

"Is this going to take much longer? My kid's going to need to get fed sometime today," Toph grumbled. She leaned forward, feeling a shift in the crowd. It wasn't much, so little in fact that were she not bored out of her mind and desperate for any distraction, that she would have overlooked it completely. Two pairs of feet. One of them was obviously a Dai Li, but then again, there were a few of those snakey bastards wandering around. The one next to it, though... it almost seemed to buzz. So much so that she couldn't get a good look at her. Or perhaps it was a him? "Can we hurry this along, I've got better things to do," Toph said, aloud, her useless eyes turned toward the mandarins who now sputtered and gaped in utter shock, but her ears were perked toward that buzzing, that shaking. Almost like a hound straining at the end of a leash, awaiting that last, pristine second before it was released.

Somebody was going to try to kill her.

"This is highly irregular," one mandarin whispered urgently to Toph. Toph answered that with a snort.

"I aim to misbehave. You people need somebody like me. Now wrap this up while I'm still young," Toph said.

The mandarin turned and shrugged toward his contemporaries. "Er, ah... But that is a tale for other days. For all of her great feats and her unflinching devotion to the service of the East, she is recognized as the S... Daughter of Heaven. The portents tell that no child of mortal birth may ever hold this throne, so we find those who dwell above," he said. Toph, having been unable to read the extraordinarily long service, hoped that this was closer to the end than she had been. But once again, her ears started to twitch again, because she'd lost 'sight' of that buzzing sensation.

"Aang, do you see anybody odd out there?" Toph asked. Aang turned to her for a moment, then scanned the crowd.

"Define odd."

"I don't know. I just have a funny feeling like," Toph tried to think of a way to describe what she'd 'seen', but it was like describing color to a blind person. Well, an ordinary blind person; she, although sightless from birth, had memories of vision in another lifetime. "It's... that."

Toph turned to face that sensation that suddenly reappeared, much closer than it had been before. So close that she could practically see the smirk on the Dai Li's face, next to that shaking, blurry mess on two legs. And when the Dai Li leaned down, she heard a voice that confused her greatly. Han Hua, that guy who helped them out years back. Doubly confusing, for what he said.

"Kill her now," Han ordered.

And then there was a horrible, high-pitched shriek, and that blurry mass lashed forward. Toph's eyes went wide as she bounded away from the palanquin which had borne her into the court, and lucky she had, because a dozen lances of stone slashed up and through it, smashing it to splinters. Toph landed firmly on her feet, and slammed her fists out, as the yard began to roil through the crowds, knocking people aside and forming a wave which crested exactly where the two of them had been standing. That rolling wave smashed against something... and dissolved into gravel. In the maelstrom, she couldn't keep track of where everybody was moving. There was just too much input. "CLEAR THE YARD!" Toph roared.

"Where is he? Did you see him?" Aang asked, jittery as a lemur in a room full of elephant rat traps.

He was answered when another wave, this one not subtle, not rolling harmlessly under the surface, but rather, smashing across the distance in a tumult of hateful earth, tore up the landscape toward her. Her fingers slipped into their usual forms, and she motioned down with her bending... but the wave kept coming. She let out a panicked curse and tried again, but this time, Twinkletoes had gotten his shit together and helped her. It took monumental effort, but they managed to smash that wave into the ground, a scant five paces from where they were standing.

"Is it just me, or was that way stronger than you?" Aang asked, glancing around. The people were now screaming and panicking, fleeing in every direction, and that made it almost impossible for Toph to see where that assassin had hidden him/herself.

"I wouldn't be making comparisons right now," Toph shouted. She thrust a hand to a Mandarin who was crouched on the floor, clutching his hat to his head as though that would protect him. "You. Am I Earth King now or not?"

"I... The Avatar has to..."

"Twinkletoes?"

"Fine, you're the Earth King," Aang said. Toph smirked.

"Thank you!" she said sarcastically, as she felt another attack coming from below. She slammed her fist down into the ground, her own shockwave... doing almost nothing to stop it's advancement. It took Aang's quick thinking to shove her aside with a blast of air before that sharpened spike of stone ripped her in half. "Gods Damn It!" Toph roared. "Who is this guy and why haven't I _heard_ of her before?"

* * *

The clatter of Smellerbee's blades was an indicator of the closest pursuit, but it still lagged a bit behind. Ked had to thank the extreme amount of running around he'd been doing in recent months for building up his stamina, because as it was, he was still fairly winded from the sprint away from the square and game of catmouse and mousecat through the streets of Kad Deid. There was also some small comfort in that Sokka was beginning to show the fatigue himself. His wife, on the other hand, was keeping up as easily as most people stay still, and with about as little effort. "So why exactly are we running away again?" Ty Lee asked, not looking at all concerned.

"There are about a hundred people in the world who could recognize me by sight alone. Far less of them since I awoke," Azula explained, taking a moment to get her wind back. She was bearing up well under the exertion, but she was hardly superhuman. Well, when it came to running, anyway. "Since very few of those that can recognize me like me very much, it behooves me to assume the worst when one does."

"Who recognized you?" Ty Lee asked.

"The Empress."

"Maybe she just saw you when you were little. You met lots of people, I bet," Ty Lee offered. Azula smiled, but shook her head.

"Empress Dov appeared out of nowhere about eight years ago. If Azula's timeline is right, she wasn't meeting anybody back then," Ked pointed out between his deep breaths.

Ty Lee glanced between the other three who were clustered there, all assuming the worst. "Soooooo... why do we have to assume that this is a bad thing? I mean, what'd we ever do to Great Whales?"

"The Fire Nation almost burnt Kad Deid to the ground, honey," Sokka informed.

"I mean us specifically," Ty Lee corrected. "Was she angry or something? Did she call for the guards?"

"We were pursued," Azula pointed out.

Sokka scratched his neck. "Of course, that might be the function of running away from the head of state when she's giving an address. Not exactly inconspicuous. It's sort of like how a Wolfbat is likely to ignore you, _until_ you start running away from it."

"Yeah, you people are _totally_ overreacting," Ty Lee said brightly. "I bet if we actually talked to those people, they'd probably stop chasing us."

"They'd stop chasing us because they'd _have_ us," Azula said pointedly.

"Oh, you're just assuming the worst like you always do," Ty Lee dismissed with a grin, and twirled her staff, snapping open that red-winged glider. "You all stay put, I'm going to go talk to the Empress, okay?"

"What?" All present yelled. But with a laugh, the airbender bounded up into the air and the wind pulled her away over the rooftops of Kad Deid. Ked just gaped up at the sky as Sokka shook his head.

"Your wife has entirely too much faith in human goodness," Azula said.

"Or maybe she has just enough?" Ked offered. Azula pondered that a moment, and had to admit, he had a point. Maybe not about this in particular, but Ty Lee had long been the source of brightness and optimism in her admittedly small social circle.

"Will she be alright?" Azula asked of the woman's husband.

"Has she ever not?" Sokka countered. "Still, I don't think this is the sort of thing we can talk out... Oh, there you are. Have some fun with the samurai, Bi?"

Bi had just come into view nearby, bruised and battered, her armor scuffed and scraped. Notably, she was now carrying one of the sledge-hammers from the Adam display. "You'd be amazed how hard it is to hurt those people. That's some pretty good armor they've got. If I had time, I would've stolen it," she said, breathing hard and sweating harder.

"Bi, are you alright? You don't look so well," Ked said, taking a step toward her.

"What? No. I'm fine. Never been bet..." she broke off when she fell to her knees and vomited on the street. Mixed in with the colors of past meals was the yellow of bile and the dark brown of blood. Once she'd emptied herself completely, she pushed herself back up to a squat. With a sickly smile and a complexion as white as Mai's, she uttered: "See. Never better."

"Bi, people don't usually vomit blood onto the the street," Azula pointed out.

"Well," Bi began, but then her eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed to the side. The three still upright gave each other glances before Azula let out a growl and move to grab the woman. She dragged the woman away from her own stomach contents and to the door of a building closed for the holiday. Azula examined the lock on the door for a moment, and then ignited a lancet of blue fire to unmake it.

It was odd, that flame. For the last few weeks, when she made the blue fire, it didn't seem as powerful as it was before. Not as destructive. The color itself was less the wrathful destructive electric blue, and more of a warm cyan. But it still worked toward her purpose, and with a swipe of her fingers, the lock fell away and the door swung out and open. Sokka dragged the woman the rest of the way, and Azla closed the doors behind them.

"What's wrong with her?" Sokka asked as Ked worked over the warrior woman with those gloves of glowing water. Ked looked... annoyed?

"It's like she wants to die or something," Ked said with a growl. He looked up at those standing around them. "She has advanced cirrhosis of her liver. She should be resting, not fighting and definitely not drinking anymore."

"Can you fix it?" Azula said. He gave her a glance. "Well, you gave me a new pair of eyes. How hard can a liver be?"

"The liver is the hardest tissue in the body to work with," Ked said, as though explaining something utterly elementary. "I could far more easily give her a brand new brain than fix her liver. I've worked on three people with liver injury or illness before. Only one of them survived the treatment."

"And how would I know this?" Azula asked, her eyes narrowed. Ked sighed with the realization that he was being an ass. "Can you fix it?"

"No. Maybe. I'm not sure," Ked said. "But what I do know is that we can't move her right now. Not without killing her. I can do other things, but fix her?" he shook his head. "We're trapped here."

Sokka quickly moved to bar the door from within, for all the good it would do since they opened outward. "Then I guess we're going to have to hope that my wife's instincts are good. Because otherwise, it's us against Kad Deid, and we're fish in a barrel."

"Aren't fish supposed to be in a barrel?" Azula asked, confused by the analogy.

"That's... Yes. Because barreled fish are what you eat," Sokka said.

"That analogy went somewhere you didn't expect, didn't it?" Azula asked.

"They do tend to do that," Sokka answered with a shrug. Azula looked around, getting a gauge of the building she was standing in. It was a toy-shop, if that could be believed, rows of dolls and lead figurines lined up along shelves. Others would doubtless be in the back room. A stairway went up to the living areas above. She pointed at that stairwell.

"You should guard the upper floor, so that they can't infiltrate from above. I have the front door," Azula ordered. Sokka, defying her expectations, nodded and went along with her direction. She settled in a chair which she pulled around from behind the sales-desk and sat in , her legs crossed, tapping her fingers on her arm. Idly, she started to bite at one of her fingernails as she stared. "Is this how you thought today would end?" she asked Ked.

"No, it is not," he answered. He leaned back with a smile of his own. "I imagined a nice, roaring fire, a soft bed, and some wine after the break-fast when the sun went down."

"So sorry to have fallen short of your fantasy," Azula said sardonically.

"My fantasy came true a while ago. Right now, I'm just basking in the afterglow," Ked answered with a wide grin, before that grin dropped away completely, and he set about working on Smellerbee again. And quietly, Azula hoped, despite having very little experience with hoping, that Ty Lee was alright. And more importantly, that she was _right_.

* * *

Ursa was pacing, a thumbnail wedged firmly between her teeth. It was one of her few but aggravating bad habits that she had never been able to shake. Once again, she blamed her mother; she was a convenient target for quite a few of Ursa's failures of character, and unlike most such targets, she actually deserved that treatment. She was gnawing on her own nails out of sheer stress. Ursa _saw_ her. She was _here_! She had no idea how it could be possible, but Azula was in Kad Deid. And when she panicked, when she reacted without forethought or care, her daughter slipped through her fingers. She was going to have harsh words for those samurai who followed after them. It was her intention to reconnect with her estranged daughter, not drive her into hiding!

"Agni damn it, Jee, why are you never here when I need you?" Ursa muttered darkly. This, too, was a punishment, the one she'd warranted for treating other men so poorly in her youth. Now, they tables appeared to be turned. She needed somebody she could talk to. She needed somebody who could keep up with her and discuss the next move. God help her, she needed somebody she could _trust_.

A light rapping came to her door, and she turned to it, slipping the mask back over her face. Of late, it was starting to chafe. But then again, she'd been wearing it for almost a decade. It was bound to aggravate her sooner or later. The door opened quietly to admit her Captain of the Guard. He kept his eyes averted as he entered her room inside the Palas Yr Llyswennod. It was actually far grander than the Palas O Ddynoliaeth, but since the former was also about two thousand years older, dating back in its original form long before the last Great Shift, it was hardly surprising. "What news do you bring me, soldier?" Ursa asked, making her displeasure known in refusing to use his name.

"_The trail has gone cold, your Eminence_," he said regretfully. "_Those who were on their heels were all... disabled... by a swordswoman of some skill. We have no idea where they could have gone._"

"_So your failure today was absolute,_" Ursa said, more bile than she intended seeping into her tone. He shuddered for a moment.

"_I will personally lead the press to find out the woman's intentions and means of escape. She..._"

"_Will not be harmed. Is that perfectly clear, soldier?_" she said forcefully.

"_Perfectly, Your Eminence,_" he said. "_Give me a quarter of an hour, and I will begin to comb Kad Deid entirely. There will be no hiding from..._"

"_What is it?_" she asked, tersely. She looked at him, but could see that his eyes were wide, staring at something he beheld in the reflection of the pristinely smooth marble floors. His hand leapt to his sword and he bolted past her, the blade coming out with a chime of well-crafted metal against its lacquered scabbard. Ursa turned just in time to hear a scrape of steel against steel, then the sound of four light thumps. Then, Owain went rock solid, before tipping over and crashing on his back onto the floor. His curved, single edged sword clattered away. And standing behind him was a young woman looking baffled, surprised, and a bit confused, as though she didn't even expect to do as she'd done.

"Are you the Empress?" the girl asked, her tone bright, and getting more and more enthusiastic and chirpy with every following word. "I mean, it's not like there's only one person in the entire country who could wear a mask like that but hey don't those clothes look so-o-o-o-o pretty could you tell where you got them because I missed my husband's birthday this year and I figure I should give him something memorable and showing up with something like that would be the best gift ever and..."

"Ty Lee? Is that you?" Ursa interjected in her native tongue, not completely believing her eyes. Or her ears. At least, neither one alone. The girl came to an abrupt halt. Ursa had met nobody as capable of speaking so quickly and without pause or interruption of flow as the her daughter's very first friend. Once little Ty Lee got on a roll, there was very little that could stop her. Luckily for Ursa, she'd managed to find what would stop her.

Ty Lee had matured into quite a striking young woman. She had a body which would likely inhabit the day-dreams of most pubescent males, but oddly, she also had tattoos on her hands and bare feet. Blue arrows. An airbender's tattoos; she only lacked the one pointing down at the bridge of her nose for a complete set. She was also wearing colors that her recollection of that little acrobatic girl from so many years ago never favored: bright yellows instead of pinks. Of course, this was all predicated on the assumption that this girl was who Ursa thought she was. And when Ty Lee burst into that smile which could outshine Agni himself, Ursa's suspicion was confirmed.

"Uh huh! Did we meet somewhere?" and then her face dropped a bit. "or... did you meet my parents? You know... before the end?"

"The end of what?" Ursa asked. She backtracked in her mind, trying to remember something related to Ty Lee Baihu, and it actually took a bit of work to dredge up the cataclysm which befell the family some six years ago. Ty Lee and her two sisters were the last blood Baihus left. "Oh. Oh, your parents. I know it isn't worth much, but I am sorry for that."

"You sound awfully familiar," Ty Lee's expression became comically stern for a moment. "Why do I keep thinking I know you?"

"Is Azula here?" Ursa asked, utterly disregarding the uncomfortable moans of Owain on the floor. Ty Lee perked up again in an instant.

"Yeah and she's all better and I'm not supposed to be talking about her, am I?" she said, growing more beaten-kitten-like as she continued. Ursa's suspicions about the girl were roundly confirmed. Although far sweeter than any noble son or daughter that Ursa had ever encountered or heard of, she seemed about as intelligent as a bag of wheat.

"I need to talk to her," Ursa said.

"Why? You really scared her sending those men after us," Ty Lee got suddenly defensive. Dumb, maybe, but loyal. It brought a smile to Ursa's face to know that her daughter hadn't been completely lost to Ozai's ways, and still know how to make actual friends.

"It was he," she nudged Owain with her toe, "who sent the men. People tend to overreact around me."

"Why does your voice seem so familiar?" Ty Lee asked. Ursa sighed, and reached up for the mask over her face.

"When I remove this mask, knowing you, you will squeal. When you do, just make sure you don't say my name," Ursa said patiently, pulling the mask free of its place.

"Why? What's wrong with Dov?" Ty Lee managed to say before Ursa rose back up, flicking her hair out of the way. Ty Lee gaped at her for a moment, before her eyes went very wide, her grin wider, and she bounced in place, a high pitched squee emitting from her as Ursa could tell she was fighting very hard to heed Ursa's direction. Ursa was about to speak again when she found the young woman rushing toward her so quickly that she had no ability whatsoever to get out of the way. And then, she was entangled in a spiderfly like embrace.

"Ty Lee... You're crushing me," Ursa said, with real alarm as the hug began to feel like it was rearranging her ribs.

"Oh! Azula's going to be so happy! You have to meet everybody! So much has changed: I joined the circus for a while but then I joined the Avatar and became an airbender and we got rid of your ex-husband together and there were weddings and Zuko finally married Mai like we all said was pretty much obvious from the first day that they'd met each other! We've got Sokka he's my husband and he's really pretty and smart and he earned all of his own money so he's not after the Baihu fortune like everybody said he was and there's Bi but she's a bit of a drunk and then there's Ked who's also a Tribesman but he's a doctor and he and Azula are in love and she's just going to be so happy to see you!"

"Wait... what?" Ursa said when the girl finally parted from her and then launched into the single longest run-on sentence that Ursa had ever heard. It probably would have taken three people all listening at the same time to piece it all together. A laconic girl, Ty Lee was not.

"I'll call my bison, Basu, and we'll take you right there! It's not too far! Oh, have you ever ridden on a sky bison before?"

"I cannot say that I have," Ursa admitted. Ty Lee let out another joyous squee, then leaned out the door and let out... well, it itched at Ursa's ear, so there was some sound, but it was almost imperceptibly high-pitched. "Why did my daughter come here?"

Ty Lee leaned back in with a shrug. "We were in the neighborhood. I wanted to see the party! But then you all started hitting straw-men with hammers and it got all bleak and stuff."

"That's the Whalesh for you. They're all insane," Ursa muttered.

"Should we do anything about him?" Ty Lee pointed down at the samurai who was still paralyzed on the ground. Ursa sighed, and leaned down to the man.

"_The only reason you are alive right now is because I know you cannot speak Huojian,_" Ursa said matter-of-factly. _"I will be away from the Palas for a while. If you inform anybody of her presence, if you tell anybody any gist of what transpired here, if you raise any alarm, if you in any way prevent me from undertaking my task, I promise, the repercussions will be very severe. Are we clear?_"

Owain's eyes bugged out, probably the only response he could give right now. Ursa smiled, that distant, superior smile, and patted him on the cheek. "_Good boy,_" she muttered. A loud, bass bellow cut through the air, and the great white and grey shaggy bulk of a sky bison settled on the ground outside the chamber. Ty Lee shouted something down to it, and it let out another bellow, before slowly rising up against all understanding of physics until the howdah on its back was level with the stone railing.

"So, how far did you say she was?" Ursa said, walking out onto the balcony, her mask back in its place. Across the square, in the Palas O Ddynoliaeth, samurai and marksmen had lined the wall. Ursa ordered them away with one flick of her wrist. As quickly as they had swarmed to defend her, they vanished back into the building, and with as little sign of their passage. Ty Lee, oblivious to this, threw a smile back.

"Not far. But we can take the scenic route if you like," she said as Ursa carefully climbed into the saddle.

"What is the scenic route?" Ursa asked. And she immediately regretted it, because Ty Lee's smile then was about four shades brighter, and an order of magnitude too enthusiastic for Ursa's comfort. Her bright golden eyes went very wide.

"Basu! Give'r!" the girl shouted. And that's when Ursa began screaming.

* * *

Toph was bleeding, which meant her day had gone from dull and bad, to interesting and bad. Of course, better interesting than dull, even if the source of that entertainment was some psychotic little bastard trying to kill ya, as she always said. Well, she hadn't actually said it yet, but given a chance, she definitely would. She shifted her bare, callused foot across the sandy clay which the gardens had been built into. When she did, a wave of sight reached out, feeding her senses with her surroundings. The people were mostly gone. Those that weren't, weren't going anywhere. Possibly ever again.

"Twinkletoes, have you got him?" Toph shouted across the distance. The worst thing about fighting that little bugger was how s/he could vanish from sight as easily as an airbender. And even when s/he was on the ground, s/he was shaking so badly that Toph could barely get a bead, let alone figure out who it was who decided to try to murder her during her coronation.

"I can't see anybody," Aang complained. There came a rumbling, and the two earthbenders, one of them provisionally, slammed back to back, before shifting in a unified motion to cut through the blizzard of chert which exploded up out of the ground. Even so, she could feel the brutally sharp stone coming within a hairsbreadth of lacerating her cheeks and shoulders.

"God damn, this kid is beefy!" Toph shouted with a smirk on her face. "Did you see how much momentum he put behind that?"

"Is this really the time to be complimenting your assassin on how strong he is?" Aang asked.

"Just use your eyes, Twinkletoes. You might spot him before I do."

Toph stopped, sliding her foot again and listening, seeing with that sense not her eyes, but in her soul. Her useless, glazed-over eyes narrowed as she felt... something. Something out on the edge of her perception. Moving slyly, quietly, as though it had taken careful measure of her and knew her limits. Toph smirked, and without a word said, began to bend the stone under her feet in a wave to catapult herself toward the unawares form of Han Hua, who was now circling around the pair of them in the excessively well pedicured gardens. Well, they had been. Now, they were an upended, uprooted mess. She had half a mind to leave it like that.

"TOPH! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" Aang shouted after her, but she didn't answer. She had her target. That bastard wanted to kill her, did he? After all that time playing nice with the Avatar and the rest? Oh, that sort of treachery did not stand with Toph Beifong!

Well, on other days it wouldn't, because at the last possible second, that twitchy mass appeared in her sensation, and let out a high-pitched shriek, and the entire palace seemed to leap to its command. The ground vanished underneath Toph's feet, sending her rolling and sliding across unforgiving stone. Another shriek, and this time, she could feel stone flying up and then down toward her in gargantuan, jagged claws. She quickly spun to her feet and cast her arms out, barely shoving that claw down before it split her in half, front to back. With a broad shove, the most basic of earthbending forms, she managed to send a block of it sailing toward that twitching mass. There was no way it could have dodged.

And it didn't. With one extension that might have been an arm, it reached forward, and the entire slab she had thrown exploded into sand and grit, with barely a move from it. Toph gaped for a moment. This guy was scary strong. She began to whip her arms around, getting ammunition of her own, but it ran forward with a scream, and clawed its arms downward. The entire floor of the Courtyard, in every direction for a hundred paces, buckled and dropped out from under her. As Toph was getting to her feet, it punched out again with both fists, then punched inward. Toph thrust her arms upward, willing the stone to catapult her back up to its level, but a stomp of its foot made that catapult only throw her about three paces into the air and land on her back. And the vast, sharpened spears of stone now arced down toward her.

"Awww, ffffffffu–" Toph began.

Then, she felt a surge of power.

It was almost like being able to see. She could tell, sight unseen and unneeded, that the mathematics of the situation had changed. Because she could feel Twinkletoes go all Glowing Badass. The stone, once moving so fast and so relentlessly that even Toph and Aang together couldn't stop it completely, now hung in the air, a scant half-pace from where she was lying. She quickly got out from under it.

"I guess I owe you one for that, Twinkletoes," Toph shouted. That assassin shrieked once again, and thrust out its hands. Toph prepared herself for the worst, because the Avatar's power can only do so much... right?

Nothing came.

The assassin let out a sound that strictly speaking wasn't completely human, and began to flail, seeking to get the stone to answer it. Toph smirked with a chortle, and thrust her own fist downward to bury him up to his neck in the stone.

Nothing happened.

"**Enough people have died today,**" the voice coming from Twinkletoes' mouth wasn't his own. It was one part that Kyoshi Warrior, Suki – which marked it as Avatar Kyoshi – and one part some guy she'd never heard before, but knew innately. Avatar Touph. Her namesake. "**The earth shall move for nobody. It shall stand as firm as time.**"

"Yeah, that's great, but what about the son of a bitch who tried to kill me?" Toph asked, not looking back at Avatar Twinkletoes. Not looking back, because even without doing so, she could 'see' him clear as day. She could even 'see' that he was glowing, as the unbridled power of hundreds of Earthbenders flowed through him, grasping unlimited control of the entire Royal Palace at Ba Sing Se and bidding it _unmovable_. And the Avatar did not answer her.

The assassin was still an indistinct mass, but less, now. Riding along the lines of Aang's bending, she could see that it was... small. Underdeveloped, possibly malnourished. And she could see that snake, Han Hua landing onto the ground next to it. Where he had come from, Toph couldn't say, but she could see a line fastened to his back.

"You are done. Come!" Han ordered. The assassin cried out, and tried to escape, but Han grabbed him by the arm, and then brutally punched the small form in the head, making it go somewhat limp.

"Don't you run away from me you rat bastard! I'm not done with you!" Toph roared. But there was a whiff of movement, and then Han Hua and the would-be-assassin were both gone. Aang twisted his arms before him, and when he cast it out, up and away from the ground, there came a crash of thunder. Whatever good it did, Toph was unable to see. There was a dimming, a shrinking of her perception, as that pristine clarity faded away. Still, she could practically see the stifled anger on Aang's face. "Why didn't you go after him?" Toph demanded, storming up to him.

"If I chase him, he'd... Look, you're alright, and we've got a duty to the living," Aang said with a sigh.

"Puh-lease. Why didn't you just go Ozai-stomper on his ass?"

"That almost killed me," Aang pointed out. He was sort of out of it for the next week or so after that little show of force, she had to admit.

"Wuss."

Twinkletoes looked around at the devastation that the attempt had wrought. So much destruction. She could feel all of the corpses left in its wake. It wasn't in the triple digits, but it was close enough. "I might be the Avatar, but there's only so much I can do," Aang turned and moved toward where some people had been injured by the flying rocks and flora.

"I'm gonna find who did this," Toph said, her eyes down and in a glare. "And I'm gonna crush them into a paste and feed it to the peacock ravens."

"Toph, you can't just kill..." Aang began.

"I am the Earth King, not the Earth Kingdoms. They're going to do what they want, no matter what I say," Toph said with a level of bitter finality. "Mark my words, this has probably got something to do with that whole not-Queen-Bi thing. You were wondering if this had a peaceful resolution? This was your answer, and it reads N-O."

Aang stopped, his head hanging. "I don't know what to do right now. I'm supposed to be this great mediator, but if I can't even convince you..."

"Sometimes, people just gotta fight. All you can do, Twinkletoes, is make sure that they're fighting the right people," Toph slugged him in the arm as she walked past him. "And that's why you've got me."

* * *

The fact that the alarmed squawk from above was not followed by angry profanity was the first indication Azula got that they were not being infiltrated. At least, not by somebody trying to kill them all. She shot a glance to Ked, who shook his head, answering her unasked question. Bi was still in critical condition, it seemed. And with the door still for the moment barred, and they somewhat short handed, it fell once again to Azula to set things right. Much as she was trying to change her cognition regarding the efficacy of others, deep down she still considered herself the most capable woman in any given room.

Azula had only gotten out of the chair when she could hear Ty Lee's high, bright voice in that upper area. This actually spurred Azula faster. Whatever news the airbender had brought had obviously better be heard quickly. And perhaps she'd even brought that great blonde beast to ferry them away from this dangerous locale? Dare it be too much to hope. Still, she took the stairs four steps at a time, and when she landed, she was half into a firebending pose even before she stopped, as she registered a third person even before she was consciously aware of it.

Ty Lee was talking so fast in Whalesh that Azula couldn't follow it at all, and even Sokka seemed a bit baffled, looking between his wife and the newcomer, a woman in fantastically pricey robes which seemed spun with strands of silver through them, and an equally shining silver mask over her features. Azula's eyes went wide.

"What is this?" Azula demanded. The silver masked woman turned toward her. "Ty Lee, why did you kidnap the Empress of Great Whales?"

"The Empress? She's not the Emp... oh, wait, yeah she is," Ty Lee sounded a bit too happy with the whole situation. Which meant that there was more than met the eye. "And I didn't kidnap her."

"It certainly felt like a kidnapping, the way you flew," the Empress muttered in perfect Huojian. Azula's brow drew down when she heard those words. Her mind flashed back, trying to pick it out. Any memory. In the last six years, nothing. In the two years before her brutalization, equally naught. But something floated to the surface. Words on the verge of tears.

"No. How could... no," Azula said, unable to really bring the thoughts together. That voice. It had to be... and yet there was no way it could. By now, she had to be dead. There was no way she would have gone this long...

Even through the eye-holes of that mask, Azula could tell that the woman's eyes, bright and gold like her own, had gone wide, and she fell silent, staring at Azula. Ty Lee kept yammering on happily for a moment before the pall of the room finally reached her, and she trailed off, stepping back and out of the way of the two women, one middle aged, the other young. "It really is you, isn't it?" she said. With a measure of haste, she pulled at that mask over her face, sliding it back over her hair and letting it clatter to the floor. The face was exactly the one Azula expected. Ursa's. Mother's.

Azula's mind was in overdrive, staring at her mother from three paces away. What could she say? What did she need to say? How could she possibly explain? "So you _are_ alive," Azula managed to pull from the swirling hell of her own apperception. Ursa took a step forward. Azula remained rooted in place.

"It must be... unexpected to see me like this," Ursa said carefully, as though she were terrified of this moment, as though she feared she might do something wrong. Azula could definitely understand the feeling. She just didn't share it. There was just too much clamoring for the surface for Azula to be empathetic right now. "I know we didn't part under the best of terms. I always considered that my worst failure."

There were two thumps, then a crisp crack in the air, as Azula found herself crossing the distance and slapping her mother in the face. Ursa looked shocked. Azula's face contorted into something half-way between outrage and pain. "Why did you do that?" Azula shouted. "Why did you have to _leave_? Why did you have to leave me with _him_?"

"I don't understand," Ursa said, rubbing at the reddening hand-print on her cheek. Azula felt tears starting to flow from her eyes despite her best intentions against it.

"Why weren't you there to _protect_ me?" she demanded, her voice shaking in her outrage.

Ursa's hand fell from her face, a look of utter bafflement on her face. "When did you ever need protection, Azula? What happened to you?"

Azula just stared at her, those tears running down her face, and then her expression just dissolved into sobbing, as she clutched at her Mama and told her, everything. From how she invented firebending based healing as a five year old, and how it damned her when she was thirteen. What Ozai did. Every mistake and miscalculation since then, all because Ursa wasn't there to do what _apparently_ every mother is supposed to. At first, Ursa was just comforting. But as the tale reached its darker points, Ursa's face hardened, became something fierce and dangerous. Finally, when Azula had trailed off, her tears for the moment ceased – and the Tribesman and the airbender apparently having enough courtesy to leave them alone – Ursa had a cold, golden glare on her face, the likes of which she would sometimes see in the mirror.

"I shouldn't have killed Azulon," Ursa said simply. "I should have killed Ozai. I should have killed him that night instead of his father. I'm so sorry, Azula. When it came to you, I couldn't do anything right. Even my best instincts to protect you... I... am sorry, Azula. I failed you."

"I couldn't keep the promise," Azula said, quickly wiping her cheeks dry with her sleeve. "I didn't remember it. I'd locked it away so what Ozai did didn't kill me. And... I tried to kill Zuko."

"Would you do it again, knowing what you know now?"

"No."

"That's all that matters," Ursa said. Slowly, a smile came back to her face as the woman pulled Azula close again, as though she were waiting a lifetime for this moment. "I want you to know that no matter what anybody ever said, I was always proud of you. I never said those things they said I did. I was always with you."

"I know. I remember now," Azula said. That swirl had died down somewhat, leaving her more able to think clearly. She took a step back, and crossed her arms before her chest. "So. Would you mind explaining to me why it seems you're the Empress of Great Whales?"

Ursa smirked, an expression almost identical to Azula's own. "That would be a very, very long story," Ursa said. "One we'll have time for later, when we're not technically committing a felony."

"I'm just going to assume that the whole 'being chased by samurai' was some sort of misunderstanding," Azula said.

Ursa chuckled at that. "My servants can be... a bit zealous sometimes. It's a definite perk of having people for whom loyalty does not stem from fear."

"A lesson I've figured out on my own," Azula noted. She turned, and her mother followed her toward the stairwell. "I don't understand why you never sought us out. You must be aware of what trouble Zuzu's in."

"I can't," Ursa said adamantly. "I can't explain how, but a curse was put on me. If I seek out your brother without jumping through a ridiculous set of metaphysical hoops, Zuko will be dead before we meet. I have no intention of attending my child's funeral, Azula. Not his nor yours."

"Touching," Azula said, and only half sarcastic. The two women, royalty past and present, turned the bend in the stairwell, and the lower floor came into view. "I suppose introductions are in order. You are already well acquainted with Ty Lee," Azula said. The airbender waved happily, as though trying to stand out from a crowd. Utterly unnecessary, considering there were only the six of them in the building, but that was the way Ty Lee was. "And the Tribesman who is entirely too personal with her is her husband, Sokka."

Ursa gave Sokka a gauging look, scanning him from hair to boots and back to his eyes. "You are taller than I was led to believe. But then again: _Tribesman_. It seems Jee was right. You were of great use to me after all."

"Wait, what?" Sokka asked. "What does Jee have to do with this?"

"You can ask him yourself when he returns. Didn't he fight against you in the Weary War?" she asked, turning to her daughter.

"Yes he did," Azula answered, leaving it at that. "The one looking half dead is Bi Bei. Some call her Smellerbee for some reason."

"She must have upset a hive of bumbleskunks and lived to tell the tale," Ursa answered. "It is not a pleasant experience, I can tell you first hand. I didn't expect that you would pick up royalty."

"Bi is royalty?" Ty Lee asked. "Since when?"

"This calls into question much of the political situation in Ba Sing Se," Ursa trailed off, kneading her brow. "What is going on over there that requires a fake Queen? And how can we use the real one to our advantage?"

"That might be difficult," Ked said, his mind definitely on his work. He was actually sweating from the effort of his healing, something she could attest he almost never did. "She's a profoundly unhealthy woman, both physically and mentally. Also, hardly what I would call leadership material."

Bi, barely cogent on the ground, muttered something which sounded like 'Bite Me, Tribesman', despite barely moving her lips and not apparently becoming wholly conscious.

"And lastly, we have Ked."

"Ked what?" Ursa asked.

"We don't have surnames where I come from," he said. He let out a grunt, then leaned back with a thoroughly distant, distracted look on his face. "I... Azula, why does it seem like the Empress is your mother?"

"I lead a very strange life," Azula answered.

Ursa's glance swung between her daughter and the Tribesman who was now getting to his feet and wiping the sweat from his brow with a sleeve. "Jee's instincts about you were also spot-on. I assume nobody bothered to even bring you in?"

"Well, apparently, I am an Initiate in some ancient order I hadn't heard about until about two months ago," Ked offered, looking uncomfortable. Doubly so, because he had to both impress Azula's mother, and be deferential to the leader of one of the larger countries on this planet.

Ursa nodded, and glanced between the two of them again. "So. How long have you been having sex with my daughter."

Ked looked like he almost swallowed his own tongue. He hemmed and hawed, stammering and trying to find some answer which would not enrage the matriarch. When Ursa's flat stare did not shift from him, nor alter one whit, his eyes turned to the floor for a moment, and then he faced her square. "Not long. And I made sure that it was what she wanted before anything happened."

"You are aware what happened to her?" Ursa asked.

"Painfully."

"What are your intentions with my daughter?" the Empress asked.

"Excuse me?" Azula cut in. "Don't I factor into this?"

"Yeah, I don't really think this is the kind of conversation we can just exclude her from," Ked pointed out.

"Indeed. He is somebody who I trust, a resource which admittedly I hold very little of. I feel no need to justify our relationship to you," Azula declared. Ursa raised an eyebrow.

"So you love him?"

"I trust him."

"For you, those two words may as well be interchangeable," Ursa said sotto, with a significant glance toward Ty Lee. Azula's snappy come back was buried under a realization. Great Agni's Fire, she did love him. How had that happened? Had it crept up on her when she wasn't looking? Worked its way into her head when she was dreaming? Ursa was smirking. "Look at that, I managed to render Azula speechless."

Ked was staring at her. She sighed. "Trust me, I'm as shocked as you are," the young firebender said. She turned to her mother. "You obviously sought me out. Your reaction when you saw me was one of desperate hope, and that doesn't come until you've failed a few times. I know that well. I simply do not understand why. Why you didn't contact me sooner. It wouldn't have been hard."

"Like you, I have a hard time trusting people," Ursa said, reaching for the door and unbarring it. "And by the time I had somebody in which I knew I could depend, you were already lost to me. I've spent the last six years funneling money, a prodigious amount, into the mental health facilities of the Fire Nation, in the off chance that it might help you recover. Since Piandao refused to tell me where you were being kept, I had to do whatever I could to keep my little girl safe."

Sokka groaned. "So that's why. That's why Jeong Jeong killed him. Because he knew where you were," he said, slapping his forehead. Azula noted the outburst, but turned her mother back toward her.

"I need to go back to the Fire Nation and undo my mistakes," Azula said. "Can you help me do that?"

Ursa nodded, one hand on the door. "I can. But if you rush back now, your help will be wasted. Grand Fire will be under siege soon, and I will not leave both of my children in that death trap. And at the same time, I am crippled in what _I_ can do to help. But I know something you can do," Ursa opened the door. A hot breeze wafted inside, pulling a smile out of both mother and daughter, as it reminded both of home.

"What is your plan?" Azula asked.

Ursa seemed to catch herself, before putting on a more open smile. Azula could see the falseness in it, because it was far too much like that manipulating smile that she herself used from time to time. "First of all," she said, with a level of cheer in her voice which was a bit odd to Azula's ear, "I want you all to stay in the Palas Yr Llyswennod. It is certainly far better accommodations than you'd find out here."

"Mother," Azula said testily.

Ursa looked to her daughter, a brow raised and a smirk on her lips. "Tell me, Zuli, how deep is your pool of chi?"

* * *

**Yes, Ursa's nickname for Azula is Zuli. Azula despises it. And yes, the Festival of Saint Adam was in fact a shout-out to Nobody Dies.**

_Leave a review._


	17. Finding Sokka's Intelligence

**Me: Hey everybody! Guess what!**

**You: You shot a man in Reno once, just to watch him die, but then got distracted and missed it?**

**Me: No. I am, however, going to be updating twice a week for all of Hope Arc. The only problem is that this means I have to finish the rapidly sprawling finale in three weeks. Nothing Golden Lasts is proving to have much more in it than I anticipated, so will actually have to be broken into three rather than just in half. Final stretch. Azula is going back to the Fire Nation, to clean up the mess started in her name. Another month gone, and winter has arrived in full. You can probably tell from the way its written, but this entire Arc is my way of saying goodbye to the world that I've altered to my whims. And aggravatingly, there's so much more I feel I could have done with it.**

**If Hatred had gone on longer, I probably could have expanded on the whole Adamite/Animist conflict in Great Whales, and some of the history which having that religion inspired. How the 'Second' Emperor was the man who swiftly killed Saint Adam with two hammerblows to save him from a gruesome beating, because he was himself a disciple of Adam. How those before Adam worshiped the Unagi. Lots of stuff. Hell, I haven't even managed to _touch_ the Storm Kings. But that's the way it goes. In order for a story to flow properly, sometimes, things need to be left unexplored and unsaid.**

**Two things: One, I couldn't conceive of a better title, so I went with the joke. Second, the first interaction between Sokka and the spy just had to happen. I know, blatant, but I couldn't help it.**

* * *

It was a vision of Hell upon earth. Specifically, hell as it was once envisioned by the now defunct Air Nomads. It was dark, the day vanished into a false night, leaving the entire plateau soaked in shadows. Even the fires which one had raged, fueled by the chi of an army, now guttered and fell dark. But that was the least of their worries. They had made very sure of that.

Smellerbee slid off of the rock which she had been perched atop, having waited for the proper moment, when the scouts' fevered attentions were directed somewhere else, giving her time to move in the darkness. Darkness was sort of her element, as theirs was fire. She had rose from the ashes before, and they had stained her. She was a killer in the night. And she had come to reap.

Despite aching body and a feeling like she hadn't slept in a week despite resting all day for her part in the plan, she flowed through them, her twinned hook-swords a blur of gleaming death. They screamed at her. Cursed her. Begged for mercy. She ignored all. When it was done, she was alone in the darkness again. She looked down at the narrow path these scouts had been dispatched to keep under watch. A grin came to her face, and she grabbed the bow from where it sat on the ground. She reached for the string, but found it had snapped. Her eyes went wide for a moment. There had to be another string! She wasn't going to be undone by a goddamned piece of string!

"Just had to go and panic and cut your string you useless sons-of-bitches," Bi muttered darkly as she began kicking the bodies over, moving them away from where they'd fallen. She was running out of time. This had to be done now, or else never. Or at least, not today, and that carried a very high price tag. Bi briefly wondered why she was here. She was no mercenary, and she was certainly no soldier. Soldiers believed in causes. They fought for nations and leaders. Bi just... fought. A wave of fatigue rolled over her, and she leaned against the pole of the hastily-built structure which held up the thatch roof. So tired.

"Oh, th'hell with that," Bi admonished herself. She swung her gaze to and fro in the darkness once again. They wouldn't have left themselves without backup. The Fire Nation were stooges, but they weren't _that_ damned easy to kill. They would keep two bows, at least. She upended the writing desk, under that canopy, and a grin shot to her face once again. "That's more like it."

It was a broken bow, one horn slashed to splinters. But the string was intact. She quickly unhooked it from the horn and restrung it onto the other bow. Once again, she was very glad that Shot had taught her something about using a bow. She knew she had no chance of hitting somebody, not at the ranges that Longshot could have pulled off, but that wasn't her part to play. This was the last station. Because of her, this side of the battlefield was now utterly blind. She reached into her pack, pulling out the special arrow head that Azula had provided. There was one other, which she took out but set aside for the moment. Fastening the arrow head to a shaft, she quickly turned and fired it high into the air, behind her position. It rose with a high shrieking whistle, which changed tone as the arrow began to fall. Then, she waited.

The battlefield before her was a sight to behold. It had been long since she'd actually taken place in a real donnybrook. And it really wasn't her style. Setpiece battles were not her strength, and she was perfectly aware of it. She was much better out here, on the fringes, preying on the stupid and the slow. Forms moved through the darkness, just at the edge of her vision in the dark. She pulled out the time-piece Ked had handed over. Four minutes to go.

The darkness was oppressive, but it changed the mathematics of the battle. At least, that was what Azula claimed. Bi had only been paying about a tenth of the attention she ought to have. Now, instead of fire flying through the air, explosions sounding in the distance, the only sounds were the wind, the occasional drone of shouting voices, and the clatter of steel. The forms flit down into the lands below her, vanishing from sight in the darkness. The Uhlans were on their way. She glanced at her time-piece. One minute.

"Well, I guess it's now or never," Bi muttered, taking the other arrow and sparking it alight on the lamp which had shattered on the ground and now created a small, burning area of grass. The fuse hissed as she quickly pulled the arrow back and launched it into the sky. At its highest point, it exploded into a blue, sparking globe. And with that, Bi sat back and extracted the last thing from her pack. It wasn't alcohol, much as she would have preferred it to be. Instead, it was a locally produced dragon pipe. She held it over that burning grass for a moment until the herbs caught. She let it smolder for a moment, staring down at the battle.

And as the first glimmers of sunlight began to slip around the edge of the eclipse, a force was moving along the edge of the battlefield. It was moving with undue haste, almost sprinting to cross the distance that she had personally blinded. And without anybody to tell them that they were heading in the wrong direction, or inform them that their orders were fraudulent, or even warn the other force that quickly found itself under their spears, one whole battalion of Blue Flame soldiers began to attack another of their compatriots.

And Bi smiled at this, taking a puff from the pipe. "I love it when a plan comes together," she said. And below her, the entire war-zone erupted into chaos, as the sun returned to the world.

* * *

**Chapter 17: Finding Sokka's Intelligence**

* * *

_Earlier_

The man he was looking for, if it was in fact he, was standing near the edge of a cliff, staring at the tides below as they roared and crashed, battering the harsh rocks north of the port of Grand Fire, once called Sozin City. It was a familiar sight. The man tilted his head, looking at the derelicts caught in the currents, smashed into the rocks, and reduced to scrap. Sokka had navigated these waters six years ago, on a much less successful invasion. This time, he didn't intend to be caught out in the open when everything went pear-shaped. Ideally, he wouldn't want things to go pear-shaped at all, but with his life, such things simply weren't possible.

Sokka stood behind the man who was leaning on a long, crook-capped stick. A glance over Sokka's shoulder took in the small flock of koala sheep teeming down the hill. This had to be the guy. Unlike the last guy. Man, was that embarrassing. Sokka waited for a long time for the man to notice him, but he had no such luck. Story of his life. He cleared his throat loudly, and the man turned. Sokka looked at him from under the brim of his pan hat.

"Shepherd?" Sokka asked. The man nodded, then turned back out to the angry ocean.

"Wrecks."

Sokka frowned, not sure what that meant. He wasn't informed there would be a password. "Come again?"

"Those don't look like like ours, do they? Those wrecks down there, I mean," the shepherd said.

"That's because they probably aren't. Are you the one I was told to meet here?"

"Depends? Are you Baihu?"

"Don't answer questions with other questions. That's how they do it in Ba Sing Se," Sokka complained. The shepherd made a sour face at the implication. He finally turned to face Sokka, letting the staff drop to the ground. His eyes, quite unlike those one would find locally, were dark grey. This man was no Sozu, despite lacking the usual olive complexion of the lower class Azuli. A smirk came to his face.

"Anybody ever tell you you look a bit like Wang Fire?" the Shepherd pointed out.

"All the time. You'd think people would stop, but then again, there'r still sightings of Avatar _Roku_ in Ember from time to time," Sokka said with a sigh. The Shepherd chuckled at that.

"I cannot understand the Embiar. And I have tried."

"Where is the army?" Sokka asked.

"Exactly where we need it not to be," the Shepherd answered, motioning Sokka to follow him. "It is a large force, but the components of it were mustered far and wide. That could be of use to you."

"Are you suggesting I prey on paranoia?"

"I would do no such thing," the Shepherd said slyly. "Of course, I would not find myself in a position to. I am a simple rancher, after all."

"Shepherd."

"Right. Shepherd. How foolish of me to forget my own vocation," the Azuli man chuckled at that like it were a very clever joke. Sokka just rolled his eyes.

"Look, you've got a lot more experience and history with the Embiar and the way that they fight," Sokka said. The other man rose his brow. "Yeah, I might be part of their noble families but that doesn't make me a native."

"Indeed not, and you're wise to remember that," the Shepherd pointed out. He paused for a moment, then kicked over a rock, exposing a small satchel. He deftly opened it with one hand and pulled out scrolls which he flicked open. "There was a plan for sappers, which was fairly cunning, but they opened up a magma pipe and fried themselves, so no harm done there. As it stands, the biggest threat comes from the Salamander division. It's backed up by three forces, located here, here... and here."

Sokka took the map for himself and began to scan it more thoroughly. It was a tight trap. While the north was technically open, it did Zuko no good, since they'd already blown the bridge toward Northern Sozu. And to the south, all of the roads into the gates had been plugged up by the Blue Flame's soldiers. "It's almost impenetrable," Sokka said. "But they said the same thing about Avalanche."

"I'm confused as to what you're planning," the Shepherd queried, flicking out a knife and picking his fingernails with it. "The moment anybody sees your army coming, all of this will be pretty much useless, because they'll shift everything about. You'll be marching into a meat grinder."

"Oh, that's the easy part, actually," Sokka said, with a broad grin. "We don't have an army."

The Shepherd stared at Sokka for a moment, as though trying to see if Sokka were making a joke. Since it soon became obvious that he wasn't, the Azuli let out a sigh and hung his head.

"Well, so much for the Fire Lord," he muttered. Oh ye of little faith, Sokka thought, but he didn't feel like illuminating the Azuli, much as his pride begged him to, if only so somebody would be able to bask in the glory of his cunning plan. But it wasn't the time to hog glory. He'd gotten most of that out of the way in his youth. Now, it was time to help friends. And he had to do it with nothing more than Azula, her new traveling companions, and two dozen Whaleshmen. This would either be awesome... or really, really sad.

* * *

Things were progressing at a pace Azula really did not enjoy nor willingly tolerate: Slowly. While she was not averse to a month in relative splendor and comfort in the warmest – by which she meant 'the only bloody warm island at all' – in Great Whales, the slow creep of days was grating. By the end of the first week, she was starting to think that this was a bizarre, passive-aggressive sort of imprisonment. By the second, she was almost sure. It wasn't until the third week that mother deigned to explain why they were wasting so much time. Only now were things moving at the pace she preferred. Which was why they were standing in a tent somewhere north of Sozin City... wait, Zuzu renamed it, didn't he? She saw the look her mother was giving her; it made her cross her arms, ignoring the headache.

"I'm not wearing them," Azula said.

"You need them. Would you rather go blind?" Ursa asked gently. Azula just glared. There was no way she was wearing glasses. None. Not a chance. And yet, they still rode her hip in their case. Not because Ked found them appealing. No, certainly not for that reason. That would have been just silly. Mother sighed and turned back to the great table.

"Our timing has to be precise," Mother said, looking over the maps of the Fire Nation, so far to the north. The others present were only those who Azula would trust, with one exception. A man with dark hair and grey eyes was sitting quietly in a corner, scribbling something on a pad of paper. For some reason, something of this man seemed familiar, but not in a critical fashion. A curiosity, nothing more. What did concern her more than his odd resemblance was what he was doing here at all.

"And why is this so important?" Azula asked. Ked and Ty Lee, both bearing no military minds whatsoever, had opted to stay out of this gathering. Bi, on the other hand, was oddly quiet, reading everything that she could get her hands on.

"Because we're recycling an old plan," Sokka said, pouring over the maps with a distracted look on his face. "It's not the best plan, but given the choice between going in there when they're both willing and able to blast the hell out of us against when they're not? I think I'll play my odds a bit less suicidally. Wouldn't you agree, _Zuli_?"

She didn't even bother looking up at him. "Call me that again, and I will murder you."

Ursa gave the Tribesman a glance. "You haven't actually informed her of this plan, have you?"

"You do realize how little I enjoy being left out of the loop," Azula said coldly.

"What? Ked didn't tell you?" Sokka asked, a distracted look on his face.

"Tell me what?" Azula asked, a heated tone entering her voice for a moment before she remembered that Ked had specifically said that he refused to hide things from her. "Sokka, are you sure you actually told him?"

"What? No, I definitely," Sokka paused, scratching his head. "Oh, right. Forgot to tell Ked," Sokka said, distracted.

"That seems to be a frequent problem with your side of this little fight," Azula pointed out. "Nobody knows what the others are doing. That's a good way to cause you trip over your own allies and make royal idiots of yourself."

Sokka nodded, not even trying to deny it. She had some respect for him for that reason. Hubris was a very dangerous, if subtle, poison, and it seemed that extremely few were ever capable of expunging themselves of it. "Alright, the plan is pretty simple," Sokka began, but Mother cut him off.

"The wait was for two reasons. The first was political. I cannot be seen to publicly help you, itself for two reasons. First of all, if they trace the help back to me, they start asking questions, questions I cannot afford to have asked. As well, foreign intervention in a Fire Nation civil war would destroy Zuko's credibility as a leader for the rest of his reign, having to depend on outside interference to put down a civil dispute."

"That would be a problem if it _was_ actually a civil war," Azula said with a scowl.

"The people think it is, and at the moment, that is what matters," Mother answered. "When I found you, I released the Uhlans from their contract."

"Great. What are the Uhlans?" Sokka asked.

"Waterbending mercenaries from Great Whales," Bi answered without looking up from her papers. "Best waterbenders that money can buy. The Fire Nation tried stamping them out lots of times back in the Weary War, but they couldn't crack that nut. Eventually, the decided that it just wasn't worth the effort."

"Mercenaries of a sort," Mother amended. "While they work for coin, they do so at my behest and to my ends. They are one of the more subtle knives of the Imperial Family. By releasing them from contract with Great Whales, and then letting them stew, I throw off suspicion..."

"For when I hire them," Azula finished. "So you are going to be providing a task force for this little cavalcade of madness after all?"

"Of course she is. She's your mother, after all," Sokka said with a smirk. The smirk quickly vanished though. "The problem is that twenty six waterbenders isn't going to do a whole lot against the combined armies of the Blue Flame."

"You'd be surprised," the man who had been otherwise silent said in a thick Whalesh accent, before turning back down to whatever it was he was doing. Azula turned back to the swordswoman.

"Azula, this is Reuven, the current leader of the Uhlans. Don't mind his unusual ways. He's an Adamite, after all," Ursa said idly. Reuven chuckled darkly at that.

"It's just lucky that the Blue Flame spread themselves thin trying to blanket Azul the way they did," Bi said. "Bunch of idiots. Even the Earth Kingdoms know you _never_ fight a land war in Azul."

"It works to our advantage. I intend to use it," Azula said with finality.

Sokka rubbed his hand along the short beard lining his jaw, but then his eyes went wide. "They don't talk!" he exclaimed.

"Come again?" Azula asked.

"You said we shot ourselves in the foot by not talking to each other?" Sokka asked. "We can force that onto them. Make them confused, make them afraid, and make them attack themselves."

"That will never work. The army is too disciplined for that sort of legerdemain."

"Really? Are we forgetting that I was beating their asses back when I was _fifteen_?" Sokka asked, a smug look on his face. Azula just glared.

She nodded, though. It wasn't a terrible plan. He just might have his hopes set too... Her eyes perked up as the notion came to her mind. "This might just work. But I need to be in the heart of this."

"Azula, one woman cannot fight an entire army."

"Her brother did once," Bi pointed out.

"That's not why I'm going," Azula overpowered the Easterner. "Brute force won't carry the day. If I simply attack them, I will be overwhelmed. I will be a blade in the dark. Get me to the commander, and I will give you your pandemonium."

"I don't like this, Azula," Mother said quietly.

"This is what I was born for, Mother," Azula brooked no argument, but Ursa sighed, anyway. "I'm not delicate, I'm not fragile, and I'm not weak. Besides, getting me in is the easy part. In case you've forgotten, 'I' am the leader of that faction."

"I know, Azula," Ursa said quietly. "That doesn't mean I have to like it."

"What was the other reason we've waited this long?" Azula demanded.

Ursa looked a bit surprised at that. "You really haven't been keeping track of them, have you?" she asked. "The reason the timing is so important is because you need to take advantage of a solar eclipse."

* * *

Kang fiddled with his eyepatch, glancing over first one shoulder then the other when he remembered he only had half of the peripheral vision he once had. Even though it had been eight years since he lost the eye, he still frequently forgot. When he beheld what he'd thought he heard, his back went straight as a rod and he snapped a salute as fast as was humanly possible. To do anything less right now would be risking instant death.

One did not perform laxly in the presence of the true Fire Lord.

"Fire Lord Azula, I was not informed of your arrival," Kang said nervously. The Fire Lord threw back the dark red hood of her robes. It was odd that she wasn't favoring the new official colors of the true Fire Nation, but it wasn't for the likes of him to question her fashion choices. "If I had been informed, I would have..."

"Hid the gross incompetence which you have been showcasing in the siege of Sozin City," the Fire Lord said dismissively.

"How did you find the travel to the mainland?" Kang asked, swallowing nervously. The woman gave him an aside glance. She didn't look quite how he'd imagined her. For some reason, he'd been sure she would look younger. But as a soldier, he could see that time and trials had worn on her a bit. She even had a few scars to prove it.

"Interminable," the Fire Lord said peevishly. "What is the status of the infiltration?"

Kang hesitated, trying to find the best way of saying this without getting himself killed. "It is a partial success."

"There is no partial success, General, there is only success and failure," she answered. He leaned to one side a bit to see who was entering into the tent in her wake. The man following in her wake was obviously a Tribal barbarian in clothing too good for him. It brought a scowl to his face.

A scowl the Fire Lord didn't miss.

"Does the presence of my physician upset you?" Azula asked, advancing on Kang until she was in his face, staring up the very few inches to his eye line. "Do you have something to say about him? Well? Have you been out in the field so long that you've forgotten how to express an opinion, or were you naturally incompetent of it?"

"I apologize for any snub I might have..." Kang began, but Azula cut him off by turning away, flicking out a hand and a gout of light blue flames. "Please forgive a soldier's mistake. I was part of the Northern Fleet, his kind bring back bad memories."

"My _kind_?" the Tribesman asked. Kang blanched. He really didn't want to die today, but at the same time, he couldn't for the life of him say something which didn't seem to lead to that inevitable conclusion.

"Ked, don't bother," Azula said before looming over the pile of reports on his desk. She began to flick through them. "You didn't answer my questions. I demanded to know what the status of the siege is, and you have been avoiding answering the question. The very fact that you are proves to me without a doubt that I am needed here more than anywhere else."

"It is not going well," Kang admitted, his eye drifting to the dirt. "We're understaffed for this endeavor, all of our troops are green, and we don't have the supplies to last out the Pretender. Worse, since he can fly in supplies where we cannot," he glanced up at her, a notable and deserved anger flitting onto his features despite his best intentions. "All because you decided to occupy Azul. Nobody ever wins against the Azuli on Azuli soil!"

"It was a strategic move," Azula said with only half a mind, still flipping through his reports. "I have no intention of sitting still while my brother unleashes the Gurkha on you all."

Kang was about to say something, but caught himself. She had a valid point. Pinning down the Gurkha was a victory in and of itself. He had no intention of ending his life with one of those duskrats' nasty knives in his ribs.

"It is almost noon. I'll have somebody bring you a refreshing drink," Kang said. He could have sworn he saw her eyes widen when he said that, but he dismissed it as a figment of his imagination. He moved toward the flap of the tent, and swept it aside. Quietly filing her fingernails was a very comely young Embiar woman in a midriff exposing dress. When he looked at her, and she noticed him, she lit up with a very bright smile.

"Who are you?" Kang asked. She was very familiar, but he couldn't place her. And only then, after he'd managed to separate his eye from her bosom, did he notice that all of the men who were supposed to be guarding his tent were lying on the ground, without so much as a mark on their bodies.

"Hi there! I'm a distraction!" the woman said cheerfully. Kang felt a chill run through him, as he stepped back into the tent and drew his blade. Ty Lee Baihu. What was she doing here? Was this Zuko's latest ploy?

"Stay back! Zuko's assassins are here!" Kang shouted as he backed into the tent. The Tribesman laughed aloud at that. "What is wrong with you, heathen rube?"

Azula didn't even bat an eyelash as the traitor girl entered the tent, still grinning widely, and not in the least cruelly. Azula did set her jaw when he insulted the physician, though. She flicked a finger at him, and there was a harsh zap in the air, as a tiny bolt of energy, like a miniature thunderstrike, bridged her fingertip to his shoulder. Every muscle in his body locked up tight and he tipped over onto the dirt.

Unable to move nor flee nor even scream, he watched with his one good eye as the Fire Lord leaned down over him. "Ironically, he was half-way right," Azula said. She flexed her fingers again, and that electric snapping sounded again as lightning ran along her digits. "I'm going to need a bit of time for this."

"I thought you said you knew how to do this?" Ked asked.

"I might have overstated my capacity," Azula admitted. Kang glanced between the two of them, baffled, terrified, and thankful he had already used the bathroom before they arrived, because otherwise this would be humiliating as well as terrifying. "I know what he did but not how he did it. This will be somewhat experimental, which is why I'm only going to try something very, very basic," she slipped his helm off and cupped the crown of his head with one hand. She looked distracted for a moment, then smirked.

"So how does that work?" Baihu asked.

"Simple," Azula looked down at him. "I'm here to destroy your armies and save my brother's life."

Kang stared, as it was the only thing he was capable of at the moment. He could only just barely feel his hands and feet, not enough to fight back. Why? Why would she do that? Azula hated her brother! She'd tried repeatedly to kill him back in the Weary War! Unless... Oh, Agni no, this wasn't Azula. There were traitors in the camp!

"There, I'm pretty sure that's betrayal," Azula said, throwing a glance to the Tribesman. Her partner in crime. "Tell Sokka to take down the messengers. How long until the eclipse?"

"Twenty minutes."

"Cutting it close," Azula said. She turned down to Kang. "You know, I never was much of a scientific mind. I let other people fiddle with machines until they work. I only care if they work. So this is a new experience for me. Just stay still and this will be over before you know it. Perhaps literally."

"W-w-wha..." Kang managed through involuntarily grit teeth.

"Don't worry. I'm just going to... change your mind a bit," Azula said. She turned to the traitorous Baihu. "I hope your faith in your husband is well founded. These are long odds we're working with."

* * *

The light turned on suddenly, to a rumbling of rock. Green eyes blinked as he tried to get his bearings. The last couple of days had been somewhat baffling. One minute, he was working in Gaoling. He'd just finished drilling the young students, getting them accustomed to the rigors and fatigues of earthbending, and was heading home, when...

"Is this the guy?" A voice asked. It was a woman, but her voice was deep, commanding, and very, very sure of itself. From the silhouette, though, it seemed more mannish. And very likely Tribesmannish, because he knew of no Easterner who would get that tall. There was another, standing beside that one, but this one was so small that it could well have been a teenager. "He didn't put up much of a fight. I figured a lot better of him."

"Yeah, well, he never was a very good earthbender," an answer came with a guffaw. Also feminine, but also very, very familiar.

"Where am I?" he shouted at the light. When he got to his feet, he was frankly a bit surprised that he wasn't chained down. "What did you do to my family?"

"Your wife is fine. Don't be a wuss," the first one said. It had to be the big silhouette, because it paused, turning to the little one. "You know, I'm beginning to wonder if this was a good idea."

"Noted."

Where had he heard that voice before? "Let me go. I haven't done anything wrong."

"Of course you haven't. That's why we're interested in you," the woman admitted. There was a heavy stomp that came with the squealing of springs, and a large boot exited the glare, followed by an appropriately scaled leg, and then an appropriately scaled the rest of her. She was large. As tall as a towering Tribesman, and powerfully built, she somehow still showed signs of Eastern descent. It was a very long moment before he recognized her, but that might have something to do with the fact that her leg was now made of wood, and she had a band across her face, covering one eye. But one did not forget somebody like Suki, leader of the Kyoshi Warriors. "This isn't a kidnapping, kiddo. This is a recruitment."

"Recruitment?" he asked. "For what?"

"I knew your father, Tyro. Good guy. Never stopped fighting," Suki said, leaning on a thick cane. When she did, her false leg let out another squeak. "As I figure it, if Haru is a chip off the old block, then we'd be an idiot not to use him."

Haru, once a warrior against the rapacity of the Fire Nation, but now a humble instructor, took a step back. "Use me for what?" he asked.

The smaller form stepped out of the glare, and Haru's face sprouted a grin. "What's this about?"

"Toph! Is that you?" Haru said with a laugh. "Man, it's been ages, hasn't it?"

"A while," the blind earthbender admitted. "And you will address me as 'your majesty', if you don't mind."

"Sure, whatever, Toph," Haru said. He pointed a finger between the two women. "So what's this all about?"

"I don't think he's going to call you 'your majesty'," Suki said flatly.

"Just as well. It gets annoying as hell once people have done it enough," Toph muttered. She didn't look up, but jabbed a finger toward him anyway. "Look here, blockhead. I'm rapidly finding that I do, in fact, need a secret police, and I got no intention of letting the Dai Li happen all over again. Kyoshi was already a great help in that regard."

"Think nothing of it," Suki said. Which confounded Haru a little.

"Anyway, I figure if I make them too autonomous, in a generation or so, we'll have another Long Feng making my kids look like idiots. So instead, I'm going to plunk somebody that I think can be trusted at the top of it. Namely you."

"Me?" Haru asked.

"Yup. You're honest, you work your guts out, and you've got credibility as a Weary War Vet with the Lower Rings. I need that, and I'm willing to pay handsomely to get it."

Haru stared at the blind earthbender for a long moment, confusion mounting in him. He turned to Suki. "This is a joke, right?"

"Nope," she said. She clapped a big hand on Toph's small shoulder. "I've got the backup in another room if this doesn't pan out. Now if you don't mind, I'm going to go home."

"Yeah, enjoy your _giant sea monster._"

"Enjoy your _politics_," Suki countered. Toph let out a groan as the Hand of Kyoshi departed, leaving the two of them alone in the cell.

"Job offer?" Haru asked.

"Yup."

Haru scratched his neck for a moment, and the obvious question came to mind. "Did it ever occur to you that you could just ask me?"

"Eh. What's the point of being Earth King if you can't go a _little_ mad with power?" Toph asked.

"Don't you mean Earth _Queen_?" Haru asked.

"No," she answered. "So what's your answer? Come on, I don't have all damned day."

* * *

Things were dull. For all they were the vanguard of the final defeat of the Pretender, this was just a dull piece of dull wrapped in dullness. But then again, having actually been in battle unlike the rest of his squad, Wei held a bit more of an appropriate sensibility about combat and what would come of it. It was a good thing the Fire Nation had good doctors, because out in the field, even the smallest of injuries... festered.

"Hey, Wei?"

"Yeah, Jong?"

"Does this look infected to you?"

"God, Jong! What is wrong with you?" Wei said, quickly turning away from his inferior. While he was only one small step above the others in rank, it meant that he wouldn't have to put up with their foolishness... most of the time. But the downside was that he couldn't slack off like he used to. "Keep your eyes open and off of your navel. We've got a job to do."

"Yeah, but it smells funny."

"_You_ smell funny," Wei corrected with a weary sigh. He turned and stared down the defile which ran along one of the somewhat-active volcanoes which ringed the seat of the Fire Lord. The Lower City was still holding strong, which showed how little effect the siege force was actually having. They hadn't even managed to start starving those people out, what with those airships landing in the Crater every day without fail, always tantalizingly out of reach.

"Should we, you know, do something?" Jong asked.

"Like what?" Wei asked wearily. Jong asked the same question every day, as if today would somehow magically be different from every other day which came before it.

"Like... I don't know."

"I didn't think so," Wei said with a nod. Bad enough that he had to babysit a whole bunch of teenagers and piss-poor firebenders most of the time. Now, he had to do it where a lucky trebuchet brick could crush him when he wasn't paying attention. What he really wanted to do was go home. Poor luck had been the story of his life. He was just about to muster out, go back to Di Huo, then all of this started.

"Hey, Wei?"

"What is it, Jong?" Wei asked wearily. Again.

"Do you think that Min would go out with me?" he asked, a very hopeful look on his face.

"Min the woman from high command? Min the woman who kicked you in the face once because you wouldn't get out of her way fast enough? Yeah, sure. I bet she's been waiting all her life for you to come along," Wei said sarcastically.

"You really think so?"

"Agni's blood, it's like talking to a wall," Wei muttered, slumping his shoulders. He could see the woman in question moving in their general direction, most likely the reason Jong had come up with the question.

"You know, there's no call to be hurtful."

"I know. It's funny, though."

Min walked past them, ignoring them both as totally as she would an insect under her heel. She was attractive, Wei guessed, but way too cold. Besides, he already had somebody waiting for him at home. At that, he actually pondered that he had one bit of good luck; that he was from Di Huo and not Betla. He knew a lot of folks who didn't walk out of Betla when the Pretender's lackeys made that daring attempt on the Fire Lord's life. To this day, he still wasn't sure what to think of how Lord Sokka got named enemy of the state.

Wei straightened when Min suddenly turned back, a very annoyed look on her face. Jong brightened like a hopeful puppy, but then again, Jong was an idiot. "What is the meaning of this?" she asked. Well, demanded, really.

"Meaning of what, sir?" Wei asked.

"Why are the sentry towers vacant?" Min demanded. Almost extorted, even.

"I'm not sure, sir. That's not my unit."

"You're telling me that you are so utterly derelict of duty that..." she trailed off when Wei's eyes widened, staring just past her. Her burgeoning tirade had distracted Wei and Jong alike, so neither saw him approach, but both saw him now, as he reached forward and tapped on the woman's shoulder. And neither could really believe their eyes.

He was very tall, his skin darkened by a lifetime in the sun. His hair and bushy beard were slate grey and his eyes flashed in the light. Wei's rational mind tried its damndest to tell him that there was no way that this could be real. That this was an utter impossibility. That nobody comes back from the dead. And yet no amount of that realization changed what he saw in front of him. Nothing changed the fact that Wang Fire himself was standing behind Min. When she turned, he swung out his fist and connected squarely with her jaw, sending her insensate to the ground. Both leaned back in surprise, too shocked to even speak.

Wang Fire reached down and pulled something out of her bags, then back up at them. His smirk was filled with an odd sort of comedy, like he knew something that they didn't. He pocketed whatever it was he'd stolen from her, then sauntered a little bit closer. Casually, he slung an arm around each man's shoulders and guided them a few steps away, a broad grin on his face, quite unlike how the man was usually portrayed. In the depictions, he was scowling or impassive, but grinning? Never. He leaned their heads in a bit.

"Nobody," he said in that unmistakable Azuli accent, "will ever believe you."

He gave each of them a pat on the cheek, then shoved them a few staggering steps forward. By the time they turned around, he was gone, a ghost who had mugged a woman and left her unconscious on the ground for reasons neither of them could understand.

"Wei...?"

"Yeah, Jong?"

"Did... did we just get attacked by Wang Fire's ghost?"

"It looks like it," Wei admitted. Mostly because he hadn't noticed the swaying of the knife-grass where the man had made his near-instantaneous escape.

* * *

"How far are we?" Azula asked over her shoulder, very carefully directing the energy away from her body and into the man's mind. It was like trying to lasso a gnat with a single hair, and required such concentration that she was broken out into a flop-sweat. Ked looked down at his time-piece, and nodded to himself. "Well?"

"We're one minute from the start of the eclipse. Are you sure you can do this before it sets in?" Ked asked.

"No."

"No as in you can't or now as in you're not sure?"

Azula ignored him for the moment. Replicating a pattern. That was all this was. She wasn't just lassoing gnats, she was also herding them to weave a tapestry using nothing but willpower and harsh language. Irukandji's violation had been the psychic equivalent of taking a sledgehammer to a supporting wall. Quick, dirty, violent, but effective. This was far more involved a process, even though it was only the most basic of concepts. There was a clack and a light thump from outside and Ty Lee ducked back into the camp.

"Reuven and his guys are waiting for the signal. It's in Bi's hands now," Ty Lee said. She quickly moved next to Azula, staring down at the blank expression of the force's commander. "Soooooo. What'cha doing?"

"The same thing I was doing ten minutes ago. Making this man think that Zuko has infiltrated and coopted one of his forces and is about to launch an internal attack," Azula said.

"Oh. Are you sure that's going to work?"

"I operate on less certainty these days. In a way it is a relief," Azula said. She felt the energy sliding, and then it locked into place. She pulled back her hands, and the man blinked, looking somewhat baffled as he slowly levered himself up to a sit. A glance to Ty Lee was all the warning the airbender got, but luckily, their years together had installed a secret language between them, so she knew to get out of the tent as quickly as humanly possible. The light outside, seen through the billowing tent-flap, began to become somewhat dim, as the disk of the sun began to be blotted out by the interloping moon. Azula put on a harsh face. "Would you mind explaining what the meaning of that little fit was?"

"Fit?" he asked, confused. He shook his head, as though trying to shake something loose. For everybody's sake, Azula hoped it didn't work. That everything stayed just where she put it. "I apologize, Fire Lord. I don't think anything like that has ever happened to me before. When did you get here?"

"Address me on your feet, soldier," Azula said. He shook his head again, and slowly got to his feet. There was no telling how well the graft took, so she decided to hedge her bets and do things the old-fashioned way as well. With lies. "You were telling me about your suspicions when you started to pitch a fit. I had thought somebody managed to poison you before you could tell me the dire news."

"Dire news?" he asked, befuddled.

"You told me you had suspicions about one of the units under your command."

"Sus... Right," he nodded. He pointed out one of the units on the map. It didn't matter to her which it was. She'd had contingencies for any of them. "Something about Bian's grouping seemed off. I think there might be a traitorous element in our camp. A fifth column. I can't explain it, really, but I'm sure that the Pretender has come up with some way of getting inside our command structure," he said.

And how right he was. And more deliciously, he thought he'd come up with the idea on his own. "Elaborate," Azula said.

"I'm not sure if I can. But my instincts about these sorts of things are pretty good. Without my instincts, I would have lost a lot more than my eye when Zhao's idiot plan went down in flames in the North," he fiddled with his eye patch as he spoke.

"Then I will defer to your experience," Azula said. "What is your recommendation?"

"The same thing we do with infected crops. Purge the ranks with fire," he said. He frowned, as the tent became quite dark. "What is this?"

Azula felt at that moment the great flood of energy come to an utter halt. Every eclipse felt much the same to her, leaving her feeling as though standing on the edge of a perilous crevasse with nothing to hold on to. It was not a comfortable sensation. It baffled her that she was almost alone in that percept; very view other firebenders ever developed their art to the point where they could feel that energy flowing down from the heavens and through their bodies. To Azula, it was as though the world and all the people in it were blind, and she was almost alone in being able to see. "It's just an eclipse. Nothing to be concerned about," she said. Not until they tried firebending at each other and panicking, and going into battle tooth and claw. Not until the darkness and confusion sapped their morale and will.

"Right. Apologies, Fire Lord," he said. He let out a grumble, like he was trying to release a nervous pressure from inside his mind. "I've put this off too long. I'm ordering the attack."

"On the Pretender?"

"With his units waiting to set upon our flanks? Not a chance," he said. "I cull the ranks, then we hit the city."

"A prudent move," Azula said. "And I will leave you to it. But do not try my patience or my courtesy again. I promise you, I will not be so understanding the next time I am informed of such incompetence in this army."

The man muttered something, but was staring intensely at the maps. She turned on her heel and strode out of the tent, Ked falling in behind her like an Aide de Camp. When they were a few paces away from the tent, Ked leaned forward. "That was... impressive."

"Now we need to see if the notion stuck. The entire point of this was to make him think he came up with it himself."

"That wasn't what I was talking about," Ked said. She felt a small smile come to her face as she moved briefly to observation post which was overlooking the area sweeping down toward Grand Fire. "You really took charge in there. You had... _authority_."

"I might not have been a legitimate Crown Princess, but unlike my brother, I always had a mind for armies and protocol. I know how to talk the language of military men. It is part of the reason why people always thought I was a strange girl."

"There's nothing wrong with women in power."

"You like powerful women, don't you?" Azula said with a smirk. Ked did not rise to the bait.

"There is definitely something pleasant about a woman who knows what she wants _and_ how to go out and get it," Ked said sagely. Azula gave him a light shove to wipe that grin off his face.

The scene was oddly tranquil in the false darkness. She wouldn't call it beautiful, but she couldn't fault the company. "You should remember that we are still being watched."

"There's always something getting in the way, isn't there?" he asked, only slightly vexed.

"Oh, please. We have plenty of time together last month. We spent half a week in bed, so you have nothing to complain about. Stop being... Zuzu-ish."

"Did you just insult me by calling me like your brother?"

"It sounded better in my head," Azula admitted. "And less incestuous."

Ked grunted, but both of them perked up when they heard a whistle sound in the air. It was thin and distant, as though so very far away. But it meant that the last part of the plan was in action. Now Sokka's other part of the plan came into effect, in the dying seconds of the eclipse. His little 'invention' had better work, or this would be the second time foreign soldiers marched on her city on her watch. And that, she just couldn't allow.

* * *

Infiltrating the ranks of the enemy soldiers was almost contemptuously easy. But then again, the Uhlans tended toward some of the more shady actions in war, so misdirection, obfuscation, and infiltration were all tools which every one of his men had refined to a razor edge. Mostly because they all knew if even one of them screwed it up, the devastation resulting would land upon more than he or she alone. With every movement, Reuven felt the odd contraption under the stolen, electric blue armor digging into his wrists. It was odd to consider that a Tribesman, who were universally seen as the most technologically backward people on the face of this Earth, could come up with something like this.

The day was dark, and worried mutters were flowing out of the tent at the center of this group of soldiers. Reuven hadn't the first idea who was going where; all he knew was that he had six of his men in each of the units. The other two were acting as the Empress' body guards, whether she wanted them to or not. He had been an Uhlan longer than she had ruled. She might be of foreign blood, but she steered the course of the nation through its darkest hour, and that earned his loyalty readily enough. He was Adamite, and she was the Empress. To him, that meant she was god. It was just a relief that god turned out not to be a moron.

"What'd'ya think they're talking about?" A soldier asked. Reuven, knowing his accent would give him away in an instant, let out an annoyed grunt, shook his head, then shrugged. "Yeah. It's bad enough we got this... fake night hanging over our heads like some sort of omen of doom. But now we got the brass all worked up? This won't end well. Mark my words."

Reuven restrained his laughter to a dry bark and turned away. How true that man's words were. He kept one eye on the horizon, and saw it. A blue and silver flash of sparks in the sky. That meant that somebody was coming down on him, and coming down hard. Good. He was tired of waiting.

"Hey, what's that sound?" a woman's voice emitted from a substantial blue armor. Reuven avoided glancing to the path where the other army would be coming. He knew which plan this was. Not the first, but not the last either. "Hey, I'm talking to you. Did you hear that?"

Reuven shook his head with an ignorant expression. It irritated him that everybody expected him to talk. At least his mother had done the smart thing and taught him Huojian as a child. Otherwise, this wouldn't just be aggravating; it would be deadly. Instead, he turned slowly to the path the other force would be approaching. The ones at its very fore-front were his own. Uhlans heading the charge, as always they did. He slowly raised to point, a baffled look on his face, which slowly became revelation, then horror. The woman in the heavy armor looked where he directed, her questions caught short, and then he heard a gasp emit from within her helm.

"Those people shouldn't be..." she began. Then, he could see Levi running ahead in his stolen disguise, the other Uhlans attached to the unit fanning out behind him. Levi shouted something back to his unit, his Huojian indestinguishable from a native. Each one of them had a mouthpiece. Uziel, Levi's lover, was the one in this squad.

"Agni's Blood! Those must be Zuko's men!" Uziel screamed. Reuven sent a feigned confused glance to his secret agent, then back toward the Uhlans running toward him. With a roar, he ran toward them, and punched forward one fist. The tiny pump hissed to life on his back, and a stream of fire erupted away from his fist, which Levi easily dodged. By Adam, it actually worked. Fake firebending for the non-firebender. He was going to have to stop doubting Lord Baihu's inventions.

The Uhlans engaged themselves first, a careful dance of violence and carnage that looked real but was not dangerous to anybody involved. But it drew the anger and the hate of those behind them. The roar of human voices began to fill the air, and two thousand souls, firebenders and no, began to surge into each other, as the first rays of sun returned from around the edge of the eclipse. When the two forces were sending fire and damage at each other with wild abandon, Reuven gave a nod to Uziel, and without so much as a ripple in the combat, a dozen waterbenders vanished from the melee, their jobs done without anybody the wiser.

* * *

Chan found he was actually getting used to Yuchiban Palace, which was something he hadn't thought possible. Splendor on this level was only meant to be ignored by those people who were born to it like Azula. The real Azula, anyway. Yui was very good at masking her awe, but he could tell it still affected her that she suddenly found herself living in abject luxury. A gilded cage, his mother would have called it. How long had it been since the fever took her? Father was never quite the same after she was gone. He threw himself into his work, pushed his children into following in his footsteps instead of educating themselves like Mother had. Needless to say, Chan was the only one dim enough to actually follow through on that course.

Chan turned to one side as he was walking, and practically jumped out of his skin with a yelp, finding Long Feng keeping pace silently beside him. "I didn't hear you coming."

"You would not," Long Feng said cryptically. "You have been keeping very close tabs on the Princess. That is a worthwhile endeavor, but I wonder if you have noticed some things about her that seem odd."

"Once again, you're going to have to define odd."

"What matters is that you keep up appearances, Chan of House Chan," Long Feng said. "Are you capable of that?"

"What appearances?"

"Things are not as they seem in this palace. That much is obvious. I even know the means by which this illusion takes place. But it amuses me to think your superior believed he could hide this from me."

"I'm not sure I follow."

"You are not as stupid as you portray yourself, Chan son of Chan," Long Feng said, not showing annoyance as Jeong Jeong would have in this situation. "It is a clever armor, one that people think they don't need to breach, thus don't assault. I know better. Obfuscating stupidity is a tool best played in the subtlest of hands. You know of which I speak."

Long Feng knew about Yui.

"What do you want?"

"Do not let Jeong Jeong dispose of her as I do not doubt he intends," Long Feng said. When Chan gaped a bit, he smirked, pulling at the faded scar running down his cheek. "Of course, that is as much an onerous duty as ordering you to continue breathing. I have a use for her, and by extension, you, as long as you are both alive and the counterfeit remains intact. See that it does not fall... Chan."

Long Feng turned off and walked through a wall, which obediently opened before him and closed behind him. A glance around showed that Chan was alone, or at least, that the Dai Li agents were good at their craft of staying out of sight. Chan. Not son of chan, not of House Chan. If he didn't do this, Long Feng was going after his family. He'd said it without uttering a single untoward word. God damn those Easterners could be scary.

Chan took a different corridor from his usual path, seeking to avoid an interlude with Long Feng's opposite member. He had no desire to be threatened by both Long Feng and the Firemaster in the same afternoon. He immediately regretted this decision, as it led him down a series of passage-ways that he had never traversed before, and in short order, he was well and truly lost. He considered going back, but knowing that the Yuchiban palace was essentially a giant ring meant that going forward would eventually return him to more familiar grounds; as well, had he gone back, he might have just gotten even more lost, down one of the innumerable side-paths which he had ignored. There was nothing but to press on, and find himself in daylight on the other side.

With a tension of his jaw and a forceful stride, he continued, but it wasn't long until he started to hear something that distracted him, drew his attention away from the path. Shouting. Angry shouting. Chan looked to the path he was walking, then toward the noise. With a grumbling to himself of always getting himself into the stupidest of situations, he walked toward the shouting, toward the hateful words in Tianxia. He began to move more slowly, his own feet vanishing into silence as he moved through a section of the palace so long abandoned that dust still draped over the wall sconces and made trails on the floor where people had walked through it, but not cleaned it. This was a part of the palace that somebody didn't want to admit existed.

There was a door, solid iron and slightly ajar. Along its bottom edge was a scuff in the settled dust, showing that it never more than half opened. That meant that whatever was inside was not too large, otherwise it would not have fit the gap. Chan tilted an ear to that crack.

"_Stand up!_" the voice shouted in Tianxia.

The answer came from a low, but high-pitched squeal.

"_I said stand up! Look your commander in the eye!_" the man pressed again. That low squeal answered him again. "_You are not obeying, Trama. You know what happens when you don't obey, don't you? Now stand up and look at me!_"

A squeaky moan answered him.

"_Very well, you brought this on yourself,_" the voice said with a note of resignation. Chan carefully glanced through that gap between the door and the doorframe, which more resembled a bulkhead than a part of a building. This must have been the vault. Every part of the room he saw inside was iron, walls, ceiling and floor. And by the look of the change in elevation from the hall to the Vault, it had to have been more than a hands-length thick. Chan wondered what somebody would be doing with a vault of those specifications. Then, he saw the contents. Just a pile of filthy rags on the floor, then another on an equally filthy child of indeterminate gender. The other inhabitant was an Easterner who wore simple clothing, but carried himself like one of those Dai Li. And the child, cowering, wouldn't look at him. So he kicked the child in the ribs. Chan winced.

The child cried out, trying to pull rags over its head, but the Dai Li pulled it up to its feet by its chin. When released, the child immediately flopped back to the floor and cowered once again. Trama, if that was what it was called, seemed utterly broken, the only thing left to it, fear. And when the Dai Li kicked it again, cursing it and profaning it, Chan wanted noting more than to burst in there and stop this. But despite what everybody thought, he wasn't an idiot. That was suicide. And he already had one person to protect here. Hardening his heart and trying to crush the guilt that the action created, he turned away.

But he did not forget. And he remembered the path.

* * *

Azula had a little smile on her face when she walked down the road, which switchbacked down the cone of the dormant volcano, her eyes not drifting to the carnage below her. There were two paths into this part of Soz... Grand Fire, and the great battle was being fought in the more open and well known one. But calling it a battle was doing a disservice to the word. This was not war. This was insanity made martial, as three sections of the host arrayed outside the city limits tore into each other without any sign of halting whatsoever.

The plan had been for half the force to eat itself. How the third quarter of it got involved, even Azula wasn't sure. But it did make Sokka look insufferably smug. "Isn't it a thing of beauty?" Bi said, uncorking the last bottle of wine she'd managed to smuggle from Great Whales. She drank straight from the neck.

"I'd say _that's_ much more beautiful, if I may say so myself," Sokka – still disguised as a dead man – said, pointing at the now ignored flank which they were past, on the side of Grand Fire. And most importantly, how a sea of red armor and standards bore down on the exposed backs of the army, and began to tear into it with a brutal vengeance. In minutes, what had been a force three times the size of the garrison of Grand Fire was reduced to a horde of fleeing soldiers, pursued by the cavalry on the backs of Komodo Rhinos. With nothing but two dozen waterbenders, twenty minutes, and two of the greatest minds of this generation, Azula had broken the siege of her home city. She dared say that it probably beat her record; it took her three days to take over Ba Sing Se. Although admittedly, it was rather comparing apples to armadillos.

Bi wiped her lips with the back of her hand. "So. What's next?"

"Next, I go home," Azula said. "It's been entirely too long."

"I know the feeling perfectly," Ked said, and that smile on her face got a little wider as she slipped an arm over his shoulder, and he slipped one of his around her waist. Strange as it was to consider, her life was finally starting to be something she could look forward to with hope. Better, she finally felt she could _afford_ to hope.

Still, she had some... trepidation about seeing old faces. She wondered what would await her in the palace which had been her childhood home. Now, at least, she didn't have to face all of that alone.

* * *

Zuko looked up as he heard the door open, and let out a relieved breath when the grinning Tribesman sauntered in. Sokka's beard was longer than usual, and he obviously had some sort of grey powder in his hair, but Zuko didn't question such trifling things. "Somehow, when I got the report 'most of the enemy army is cannibalizing itself', I had a feeling that you had something to do with it," Zuko said, getting to his feet and stretching his back. He had been hunched over with his generals for hours, trying to figure out some way of conclusively breaking the siege. When the other side did so to itself, Zuko made a point to not fall short of seizing the opportunity.

"I had some small part to play," Sokka said modestly. Zuko leaned to one side, as he noticed that the Tribesman was not alone. Right behind him was Ty Lee, grinning so wide it seemed the top of her head was going to fall off. Beyond those was a somewhat untidy looking Easterner whom was only vaguely familiar. He put her out of his mind. "Did you get my message?"

"I knew you were coming back. I didn't think that you'd open the road to the gates to do it," Zuko said, clapping his old friend on the shoulder. "Who's your friend?"

"A woman who tried to kill me one time. Oddly, that seem to be a common trend in my recent companions. Where's your greater half?" Sokka asked with a smirk.

"Mai? She's asleep. Between the two of us, somebody's awake pretty much at all times," Zuko said. He looked again, and a second Tribesman entered the chamber. Zuko found his heartrate soaring, and he immediately surged against Sokka, his hands clawing as he strove for the neck of the man who stole his sister. "WHAT IS HE DOING HERE?"

"Whoa! Calm down, crankypants!" Sokka said. "He didn't kidnap your sister. Long Feng did. If Ked didn't go along with it, they would have killed his family."

Zuko stopped pressing against the taller man's restraint, but still couldn't shake that sense of betrayal and rage, nor smother that glare he leveled at the doctor whom he'd entrusted his sister's recovery. He wanted to be angry, but he understood that motivation, and could find precious little fault in it. "Where did you take her? Is she alright?"

"Yes, _she_ is," another voice answered. Ked took one step to the left, and Zuko felt the bottom fall out of his world. For just an instant, one blinding, confusing instant, he could have sworn Mother had come home. But the woman there was too young, and Mother had never looked so ragged, so scarred. And that smirk on her face had only one source that Zuko could remember. She thumbed a sweep of hair away from her eye and tucked it behind an ear. "I suppose that you have mixed feelings seeing me again, brother?"

"Azula?" Zuko asked, not daring to believe his eyes nor his ears.

"Oh, am I standing on your blind side?" she asked with a smirk, but not the usual, caustic tone she usually employed. It was almost... warm. "I understand that there might be some friction between us, but we both have the same goal in mind. So I recommend that we work together for GAH!"

Azula let out a yelp as Zuko quickly grabbed her and crushed her to his chest, his eyes pulled tight and a grin on his face. She was alright. His little sister was safe. When he finally released her, she was looking a bit baffled. "You're alright! Agni's blood, Azula, what happened? What's with..." he ran a finger down a scar running along side her nose.

"Somebody liked the look of my eyes, so he took them," Azula said with an unsteady dismissiveness. "Are you just going to accept that I'm back without so much as a single inkling that I'm here to assassinate you and take your place on the Burning Throne?"

"Are you?"

"No, but why would you believe that? Have you really become so soft?"

"Oh, cut the guy a break. He's got bigger shit to deal with than an uppity little sister," the Easterner said. Zuko almost gaped in shock at how Azula neither responded with hostility nor derision, merely nodding as though she made a valid point.

"Fine," Azula said. "As I see it, there is some catching up to be done. But not now. I'm tired and I just spent the whole evening being dragged around my city by an over-enthusiastic airbender."

"Yeah, I can see that," Zuko said, still feeling like he was asleep, like this was all some strange dream. She wandered out, taking the hand of the doctor as she left.

"I'll find myself a place to stay," his sister called back, singsong, as she left the room with the doctor in tow. Zuko just stared after them, agape, then turned to Ty Lee.

"Did that really happen?"

"Yup!"

"Why was she holding his..."

"They're in love!"

Zuko wiped a hand over his face. "Are you really sure that's _actually_ Azula?" He asked. Because the alternative was, for reasons he couldn't really control, too strange to comprehend.

* * *

_Leave a review._


	18. Fire Tribe Part 1: Heart of Darkness

**Me: Hey, guess what?**

**You: The Beast and his army shall rise from the pit and make war against God?**

**Me: ...no. Still working on the finale. Man, that thing's getting out of control. Luckily there's lots of chapters between now and then. It's like a cancerous tumor that keeps swelling until it needs its own Postal Code. But I'll get through it, like a man with a surgical chain-saw and I think this metaphor ended up some place I didn't really expect it to.**

**Yeah, the previous chapter wasn't one of my stronger ones, but I needed to have a bridging event between her reconnecting with her mother in Great Whales to her returning to the Fire Nation. Perhaps not my best work, but every series has its lulls *coughGreatDividecough*. Now, because of the way the story is going, it likely won't get revealed in text, but to assuage the curiosity as to Azula's reaction on meeting Reuven: She has already met, fought, killed, and fought again, his relative. Reuven is the son of the son of the daughter of Aang's baby sister. Air Nomad parenting practices, being that no children grew up with their parents, also created a situation where no child knew his or her siblings. Only the elders did, so had to be very careful not to let consanguiny happen by accident. Aang never knew his siblings even existed. And given that the Southern Air Temple is actually on the Whalesh island of De-Aer, quite a few survivors of the purge eventually integrated into Whalesh society, as the survivors of the East, North, and West would hide amongst the Earth Kingdoms, Northern Tribe, and Fire Nation, respectively.**

**Also: Azula is very uncomfortable around children. She's afraid she'll break them somehow. Call it an artifact of having Ozai for a father and wanting not to emulate him.**

**Finally, Toph's painting was something that I wanted to bring in ever since I decided that she was going to get off her ass and become Earth King.**

* * *

Ked awoke slowly, groggily, as he did when he lived here for the four years that he had been overseeing Azula. In a way, it was a task he continued to this day, albeit in a fashion he could never have predicted. His eyes drifted open as he felt her slowly slide away from him and sit up at the edge of the bed. They had both been so tired after the events of the day before that they had decided as one to simply take off their boots, find a bed, and fall asleep on it. Azula had no intention of going back to her old bedroom, and she was very uncomfortable sleeping in her mother's, now that she understood the implications of why she'd done so last time. But that was a problem that had seen its happy conclusion. Azula was safe, she was healthy, and she was driven. But that meant Ked had to wake up at this ungodly hour.

"Can't you go back to sleep?" Ked asked. She was frequently awake long before he was, which was really something because he accounted himself an early riser. "It's comfortable and I can't fault the company."

"The sun is up, and I am a firebender. That is how these things work," Azula said simply, stretching her back and arms. Not even bothering to find proper sleeping attire, they had opted to sleep in what they were wearing. She looked disheveled, her clothes were wrinkled, her hair was disarrayed and she had a weird red mark on her face from where the pillow sat while she was sleeping. But she had a little smile on her face, and that make Ked unspeakably happy.

All told even though the oppressive heat, which beat down even during the heart of winter in the Fire Nation – if the equatorial continent could even be said to have such a season – grated and made Ked sweat like a teenager who can hear the Tiger Bear, but not see it, it was swiftly becoming a familiar sensation. It was odd how a scant four years in these single digit latitudes had altered what he thought of as normal. He quickly changed into something a bit less slept in, and managed to exit the bedroom at the same time as his paramour who had instead wrangled her hair and put on fresh lipstick. It was a primal thing those bright red lips awakened in him. He was thinking his happy thoughts when he stepped through that door. And how quickly that train of thought derailed into a flaming mess when he noticed that the two of them were not alone in the sitting room.

The Fire Lord was there, as was to be expected in a way. He was still reeling from having his sister not only come back into his life, but to do so without so much as a single implication towards fratricide. The other was a woman Ked had sometimes seen, but never conversed with, the dark and superficially gloomy Fire Lady. She was Azuli, it was obvious from the build of her face and the bright silvery color of her eyes, but she was a great deal paler than most Azuli he'd ever met. Most of the Azuli he'd come into contact with had skin tones paler than his own, but not by very much. The lithe, tall woman stood and stared at Azula. Azula stared back.

"So you came back," Mai said neutrally.

"I had to eventually. Dumdum here seemed to be driving this country into the ground," Azula answered. The two began to walk, first toward each other, but then in a slow circle, like a pair of angry cats who weren't sure who should take the first swipe.

"I have to say, you look like hell," Mai said.

"And you look like you haven't slept in days," Azula answered. "Now that we've got the pointless small-talk out of the way, how about you tell me what's really on your mind. You _did_ learn how to express yourself in the last six years, I hope? It would be a shame if Zuzu had a dead fish for a wife."

"I've learned a few things," Mai answered. Her eyes narrowed. "And so have you, it appears."

"You're not going to demand an apology?" Azula asked, sounding somewhat curious.

"That would be an exercise in futility. I know you aren't the sort to give one sincerely."

"Perhaps you didn't know me as well as you thought you did," Azula said. A scowl came to her face. "You betrayed me."

"You tried to kill me."

"Only after you betrayed me."

Zuko took a step forward, but Ked, having seen this behavior both in the South Pole and more recently up here in the Fire Nation amongst families in a degree of crisis, warded him off with a hand and a shake of his head.

"I did the math. I wasn't going to lose the man I loved for a woman who was losing her mind," Mai said.

"And you never thought to actually mention this to me? Or do it in a fashion which didn't utterly unhinge my mental state?" Azula demanded.

"Would you have listened?" Mai asked.

"You broke my arm!"

"You electrocuted my husband."

"That didn't count because he threw it at Jeong Jeong. Shame that he missed," Azula said.

"I'm not talking about Avalanche. You tried to murder my husband, myself, and my unborn child with one lightning bolt."

Azula blanched at that, and looked away. "Yes," she said simply, "I did."

"And then you have the audacity to walk back in here and demand things return the way they were before all of this ever happened?" Mai asked, her tone cold and sharp.

"I... I regret doing that," Azula said. She sighed, her circling stopping for a moment. "The worst part is, if you were to ask my why I did it, I honestly couldn't give you an answer. To this day, I have no idea why I did what I did that day. It... haunts me."

Mai stared at Azula for a long, silent moment. She tapped her fingers against her arm, framed by the door threshold behind her. "You actually mean that, don't you?" she asked, her flat tones actually showcasing a bit of honest surprise.

"I've had some paradigm shifting experiences in the last two months," Azula said. "I'm quickly realizing that I hold precious little of the moral high ground. But I'm going to change that. I am more than what Ozai made me."

"That's good to hear."

"I did save your daughter, after all," Azula said with a dismissive tone.

"And I did keep the Avatar from taking your firebending from you," Mai said with a tone almost identical. A smirk came to the pale woman's face. "It seems we keep balancing the scale, the two of us."

"Maybe we should just start over," Azula said. "Metaphorically. I already know all of the old things. What about the new?"

"Tit for tat."

"Deal. How many children?"

"Three. How long have you been sleeping with the doctor?"

"A month and a half," Azula answered. Zuko began to turn as red as his robes.

"Fire Lord, there's a perfectly good explanation for..."

"Strange as it is to say, I care deeply for that peasant from the glaciers," Azula said, turning Zuko's burgeoning rage into something more impotent. "So stay out of this, Zuzu. Names."

"Yuuki, Kimiko, and Rukio, in order."

"So Zuzu kept the naming scheme alive, did he?"

"It was the one thing he wouldn't budge on," Mai said. "What happened to your face?"

"Had my eyes cut out. Ked gave me new ones. What is the Azuli situation?"

"Montoya evacuated his family into the hills, Azul is 'occupied' to whatever extent it can be. Where have you been since Betla?"

"Betla?" Zuko asked.

"Long story," Ked piped in.

"Great Whales," Azula answered. A smirk came to her face. "I ran into your parents down there almost two months ago. Good to know that Zuzu actually followed through on my order of banishment."

"They were incompetent and I want to have nothing to do with them," Mai said.

"I see. Well, your father seems to have found his niche telling people what to do at a dockyard in Ardrosseihine. And you have a three year old little sister. I didn't inquire as to her name."

"Really? I thought Tahm-Tahm was their 'miracle child'," Mai said. "Adopted?"

"Unlikely. Do with it what you will," Azula paused, and Ked could almost hear her stomach grumbling. "We should continue this over breakfast. There is much to discuss."

"Yes, there certainly is."

The two women left amicably enough, heading toward the dining area of the Fire Palace. Ked turned to Azula's older brother. "So... I suppose you're going to want to know about..."

"Don't... say anything," Zuko said. "I got my sister back. That's a good thing. I don't want to be angry right now. So just... don't say anything."

And with that, the Fire Lord left, leaving Ked alone in the room. He sighed, then began to rummage for his boots. They were a bit harder to find than he'd remembered. By the time he got them on, there was a small girl with big golden eyes staring at him from the door. "Yes?" he asked.

"You look like Unkie Sokka," the girl said with confidence only a three year old can muster. "Are you funny like him?"

Ked pondered briefly. "You're Kimiko, right?" the girl nodded vigorously. "No. No I'm not. Come on, let's get you to your father."

"You really are no fun," she pouted, but she let him guide her by the hand to where the Fire Lord, his wife, and his sister were having breakfast. The day was just beginning, the heat was pulling the sweat from his skin, and he had no idea what to do next. In other words, it was a perfectly ordinary day.

* * *

**Chapter 18: Fire Tribe Part 1: Heart of Darkness**

* * *

Ursa considered again if she should get back on the boats and head to Kad Deid, so she would be in a position of greatest help. The rational part of her mind told her that if things went well, she would need to muster a great deal of power and soldiers quickly. As well, she would need to oversee the transfer of a monumental amount of money, set up logistics, figure out how to spin her revelation without setting off a war of succession, and a thousand other niggling tiny tasks. She had all that to do, but heading back was about as easy as leaving behind her own head. She was finally home. She was so close. She could almost _taste_ the end.

"Your Eminence?" Reuven said as he appeared out of a shadow. Ursa, to her credit, didn't start. She had long been aware of Reuven's intense sneakiness. "I heard that you're sending the ships home. Why are you not aboard?"

"I am not returning to Kad Deid. Not yet," Ursa said. A union of tribes, that was the key to this. "There are a few things I need to find out while I'm here, things I cannot learn in Great Whales."

"Some might call this an unacceptable risk," Reuven pointed out easily. "Make Ambassador Jee do it."

"We've already missed Jee twice," Ursa said. "Besides, the things I need to know, he would not be able to discover," she held up a hand, forestalling Reuven, "because nobody but I would know where to look."

Reuven sighed at that. It was truth. Only Iroh and Ursa knew about the specifics of the curse. That the 'gates' were almost unlocked, that her standing on the dark volcanic sands of the Fire Nation was possible was only because the end was near. All that remained was 'the union of tribes', something Iroh had been magnificently incapable of elaborating on. But she now had access to the Fire Academy, and the vast libraries at Grand Ember.

"I suppose there is no talking you out of this?" he asked. She answered him with a flat stare. "As you wish, Your Eminence. The Uhlans will remain with you to oversee your safety."

"I remind you that you are under contract with my daughter?" Ursa pointed out.

"Most of us."

"You tread a dangerous line, Reuven."

"My loyalties are to Adam and to you," Reuven said simply. "Treading a difficult line is just part of my life."

"Very well," Ursa said. "We leave immediately."

Reuven nodded, and shouted to the pair of waterbenders who would be overseeing her. She glanced to the south one last time. Her home for so brief a time, but always in her heart. That was where her children were, both of them. She would come back. No force on this planet could keep her away. She just needed to understand what she was overlooking, and what it would take to see her babies again.

* * *

"Your biggest problem is that you lack allies," Azula said matter-of-factly as she worked her way through breakfast. It was odd that a scant two months away from the Fire Nation had changed her palate to the point where the dishes that she had grown up on suddenly seemed... unusual. Overspiced and undersalted. Her time in the East hadn't been nearly so destructive to her sense of taste, but then again, it could be said that the East had far more in common, culinarily, with the West than did the nations south of the Equator.

"That is hardly news," Mai said. Zuko grunted, eating too heartily to answer verbously. It was a habit he'd brought back with him during his own stay on that vast and wind swept continent. That and always asking how much things cost, even though money was no object to him. "Considering that we didn't have enough of an army left in places that are useful to us to break the siege until your little ploy at our gates."

Azula felt a smirk pull at her lips. "It makes me wonder what you _have_ been doing these last few years. Not much seems to have changed."

Zuko muttered something under his breath, then answered "Preventing a financial breakdown. You might not have been aware, but Ozai pretty much wrecked the economy in the nine years he was Fire Lord. It took everything I had to make it so that our Flames are worth the nickle they're struck from."

Azula scowled. "Flames are silver."

"Not anymore," Mai said, a roll of her eyes coming with it. "Apparently, we are better off tying our money to economics rather than metals."

"It's true," Zuko said. He let out an uneasy laugh. "And to think, when I was young, I was sure I would never use any of that economic nonsense Iroh would ramble about."

"Anyway," Sokka interjected, easily gnawing on a spiced jerky which even on her best days Azula would find far too hot for any sane taste, "we all know what happens if anybody out there gets a whiff of foreign involvement in this. You can kiss your credibility goodbye."

"You didn't seem to have a problem with those waterbenders," Mai pointed out. The dragon, which Azula had been understandably shocked to see, had moved from Mai's side to Azula's very quickly, the great bulk of its head lying on the floor between Azula and Ked. It kept pushing at her free hand, like it wanted her to pet it.

"The Uhlans are mercenaries. They work for whomever pays them."

"And how are you paying them?

"They owe me certain favors," Azula answered easily, and untruthfully. She made a promise to her mother not to tell anybody outside her immediate circle about Ursa's whereabouts. She already screwed up with one promise she made to that woman, and was not going to fail again. "But I think I have a solution which suits your problems perfectly. You cannot face Jeong Jeong and Long Feng on equal footing, because the latter is augmenting the former's force with Easterners and earthbenders. Your army is in shambles, with most of those not dead then injured and requiring long recuperation. The Uhlans may not be renowned for their healing, but they are cross trained and have some skill, if nothing in comparison to Ked," Ked smirked at that. "They will be of use, even if they don't see a single day of combat. But that only ameliorates one problem. The greater one is how to deal with the 'unholy alliance' of East and West. Jeong Jeong gives the movement credibility. He is an artifact of Ozai's rule. If we could remove Jeong Jeong from the equation and implicate Long Feng, the entire civil war would break down. Embiar are many things, but willing patsies, not."

"You think I haven't thought of that?" Mai asked. "It would come down to our word against the impostor's, and they would believe her, not us. I wager even if _you_ make that claim, they will still believe her."

"Indeed. I don't doubt they've manufactured some way of making it seem like she can make blue fire?" Azula asked. Mai nodded. "Very well. We will have to appeal to a higher authority. What are you _staring_ at?"

Kimiko, who had been inching toward her around the table, giggled a bit when Azula faced her. "You're pretty."

"Thank... you?" Azula asked. Something about that girl being so... close... unnerved Azula.

"Nobody said Auntie 'Zula was pretty. I got a pretty auntie!" she cheerfully exclaimed. Azula, unable to formulate a response to this, turned to Mai. Her other children were much more quiet. One of them asleep in the pale Azuli's arms, the other huddled close to her father as though nervous.

"Who's authority is higher than the Fire Sages?" Zuko asked. As the Fire Lord, he was in essence the leader of the Fire Sages. Unless he changed that when she wasn't looking.

"The Sun Warriors," Sokka answered. Zuko raised his one remaining eyebrow at that.

"Come again?"

"You said you learned the first form of firebending from its original adherents," Sokka answered. "They'd be kinda the guys to go to to prove that, firebending for firebending, Azula is the genuine article. I mean, how often do people go all..." he searched for a word. "Azula-y with their fire?"

Ked began to nod, not seeming to be distressed in the slightest at having a three year old girl now crawling across his lap to get closer to Azula. Chong Sheng, Zuko's Dragon, seemed positively inured to her clambering. It was probably not the first time the girl had done such a thing. Azula inched away. "_Very_ infrequently," Azula answered. "What are you doing?"

"You have nice hair. Can I touch it?" the little girl asked.

"No. Go back to your father."

"Are you alright?" Ked asked.

"My point is," Azula said, powering through the inexplicable discomfort she felt right now and getting back on track, "there are other firebenders out there. If we can bring them to your side, then you gain allies which come at no political cost to you."

"I assume you're the one who told her about this?" Zuzu asked Sokka. Sokka shrugged.

"Seemed like a good idea."

Zuko turned to Azula, hand out as though already trying to placate her. She gave a flat glare at his hand, and he pulled it back. "Um. Right. Azula, these people aren't like us. They're an ancient tribe cut off from all outside contact for centuries, if not millennia. They're a bit... xenophobic. And they don't even speak the same language as we do."

"They speak Hui, don't they?" Azula asked.

"Well, I guess..."

"Awesome! I speak Hui!" Ty Lee piped up enthusiastically. Zuko goggled at the airbender who was beaming proudly.

"Since when?"

"Duh, since I was like, twelve!"

"Ancient languages course at the Fire Academy," Azula said. She got a smirk on her face. "How has 'genetics' worked out for you, Mai?"

"I'll tell you later, when there aren't children around," Mai answered with a flat tone with just a hint of sarcasm. It had been a long time since the two of them had been able to just... strafe each other like they used to. It was a vitriolic friendship that they had, but that didn't make it less meaningful. "I assume that there's no talking out out of this insane course of action. There's no telling where in Hui they'll be."

"Yeah, there kinda is," Sokka said. "Because we can fly over it now. We just have to look for parts of the jungle which are sparser. The 'Sun Warriors' have to have open land somewhere to... what is that sound?"

That sound, as it turned out, was a disconcerted moan coming from the back of Azula's throat, as the three year old girl was now leaning in toward her, and Azula leaned away. She knew intellectually that there was no reason she should be so... unnerved... by the child, but the rational part of her mind didn't seem to be in control at the moment. The only thing it was capable of was parceling away the sensation for later scrutiny. "Can you please control your child?" Azula asked. Almost demanded.

"You don't know Kimiko. Not even the Avatar can control her. Trust me. He's tried," Zuko said, a somewhat infuriating grin on his face. He was getting a rise out of this! Ooooh, if she hadn't decided long before not to deal horrible pain and punishment upon him, he would be getting such a beating! After his quiet chuckling died down, he cleared his throat. "Kimi, leave Azula alone. You're making her uncomfortable."

"Aw, but I wanted to..."

"Kimiko," Mai said flatly. Kimiko put on a little pout and sulked her way back to the other side of the table. She sat between her parents, next to her older sister, looking for all the world like somebody had just kicked her kitten. Azula, no longer distracted, knew what was going to come next, so she headed him off even as his mouth opened.

"And you can't come with us," Azula said. Zuko froze mid-phoneme. "Whereas I can come and go with relative impunity – if only because, for the moment, it is probably for the best that as few people as possible know that I am here – it pains me to admit that you are the one who must remain in the palace. The people are looking to _you_ for leadership in the midst of what they think is a civil war. If you lark off, well, that would make you seem if not fearful and weak, then utterly psychotic. I can manage this perfectly well on my own."

"Azula, there's more to this than Sokka could have told you," he said. "There's a delicate balance, and a somewhat sensitive agreement Aang and I made last time we were up there. I can't go back on it."

"And you won't," Azula said with a smirk. "You just keep your little country from falling down around your ears, and I'll make sure you don't fight all of your battles alone. Can you manage that?"

Mai smirked, but Zuko growled. "Are you sure she's _good_ now?" Zuko asked.

"Hey, I never said 'good'," Sokka answered. "I just said better."

"Well, right now, I'm not seeing it," Zuko said, but they way he said it screamed relief, and contentment. It was a sensation that Azula couldn't feel, not yet. Because for Zuko, he had his family back together. Azula knew that one other was missing, and she couldn't tell him that. She made a promise. Azula keeps her promises. Most of the time. Alright, some of the time. When she isn't lying, anyway.

* * *

Ty Lee looked happier than usual, and that was an achievement, because her usual state was giddy with a side order of bliss. Sokka, unfortunately, was the sort of person to _always_ question favor and fortune. His years as a shaman and piss-poor waterbender had done nothing to temper his brutal naturalism and innate curiosity, even when his common sense screamed in his mind to just let something be and not put himself into jeopardy over it.

As well punch the ground and split the world in two.

"You're looking brighter than usual," Sokka said, shifting on his seat on Basu's brow. The woman he married kept that airy grin on her face, like she was barely aware of the world. "Did I have something to do with that?"

"Yeah," she said dreamily. Sokka felt a momentary upswelling of pride, before his rationality kicked in and reminded him that no, this probably had nothing to do with the fact that while she was capable of paralyzing grown men with her fingertips, he was capable of paralyzing a master airbender with nothing but his tongue. Something else had her distracted and happy.

"How so?" Sokka asked, hopefully managing to hide his internal dialog. Of course, it wasn't very hard. Ty Lee was, above all, a trusting woman. Come on, she was best friends with Azula, back when Azula was... for lack of a better descriptor, Azula.

"The gang was back together!" she said distantly. She leaned close, hugging his arm and staring out over the expanse of land which was quickly changing from fields to slash-and-burn wasteland, and with the hard line of the wall of the Hui Jungle in the distance. The Hui was an impressive ecosystem, he'd heard. Capable of swallowing anything nearby, choking man-made structures under tonnes of creeping vines, fast growing trees blotting out the very sun, their roots undercutting foundations. And it advanced without mercy or pity. As much as the burnt expanse below called to mind unpleasant memories from his youth, he could understand why they did it. It was because there was nothing else on this Earth which would hold the forest at bay, even for a week or two.

"I guess it's been a long time since the whole group was in one place," Sokka admitted. "I mean, how long has it been since Team Avatar stood together?"

"There was the wedding?" Sokka frowned, though. Yeah, they were all there at Mai and Zuko's wedding, but that was later. Ozai was taken down, everybody was just... settling. The adventure was over. Real Life had started to rear its head. "I wish Azula could have seen it. She would have liked it."

"Are you sure about that?" Sokka asked. "I mean, I don't see her as the matrimonial type. I'm surprised that she took a shine to Ked at all; that she's still surfing that wave is little short of astonishing."

"You don't know her like I do,"

"Admittedly not."

"I wonder when they're getting married?"

Sokka burst out laughing at that. For some reason, it was far funnier than he could have anticipated. Ked, the pint-sized psychopath with a chip on his shoulder, marrying Azula, the fiery apocalypse waiting to happen. That would be the event of the millennium. Or possibly the firestorm which destroys all life on Earth. He accounted the odds at roughly fifty-fifty. "I can't say, Sugar Queen," Sokka said, utilizing Toph's nickname for her without even realizing it. "Probably about when Hell congeals and the fires go out."

"Sokka!"

"What? I'm calling it as I see it," Sokka complained. She still frowned at him for a moment. But that, as with all bad moods around the airbender, very swiftly passed. Relentlessly happy. That was one way that Ty Lee Baihu had been described. By Sokka's father, Hakoda, no less. Before she tackled him with one of her rib-creaking hugs. The truth was a bit different, though. Anything Ty Lee ever did, she did without any half-measures. When she was happy, she was in bliss. When she was sad, she bawled. When she was angry, which was not frequently, tornadoes happened. "Still, it's good that she's on our side this time."

"Yeah."

"I mean, that thing with the armies? That was a good plan, I've gotta say."

"Uh-huh."

"And getting the Red Flame to rout them when they were too busy and blinded besides? Brilliant!"

"Yeah, she's good at that sort of thing."

Sokka nodded. It was odd to consider, but it almost felt like he'd found an intellectual equal in Azula. And this time, he had other avenues of conversation than witty, mid-battle banter and inferences about her mental state through the intricacy of her plans. Below, the wasteland gave way to the jungle, and green swept the horizon. Even the swell of the diminishing mountains was awash in verdancy.

Now, they just had to rediscover a lost civilization, but this time, without the use of a map. No sweat. The vast jungle loomed, without a single break or deviation.

Alright. Maybe a bit of sweat.

* * *

The sounds of the jungle were actually somewhat familiar to Azula. Not these specific sounds from this specific jungle, but the mild cacophony of living things vying for an ecological niche drew to mind her time in the temperate rainforests of Pulse. The differences were universally for the better. It was wet, yes, but it was also far warmer here on her home continent, and there was no risk of being brained by a dropping coconut the size of a catapult stone. She held no illusions that finding Zuzu's fabled Sun Warriors was going to be a simple task. In fact, she reckoned that it was likely going to be far harder for her than it had been for him, because this time, they knew that outsiders were looking for them.

Of course, degree of difficulty never bothered Azula. Just because something was difficult, or even declaratively impossible, didn't mean that it was going to discourage the once-and-never Crown Princess from actually doing it. The entire nation had struggled back from the brink of doom thousands of years ago, and done the impossible since. The nation of charity-cases and luckless losers now stood at the bleeding edge of technological innovation, while the smug pedagogues of the East lagged further and further behind.

"Plotting somebody's downfall?" Bi asked from her spot near the fire. It was very dark under the canopy, just like Pulse, so the fire was something of a comfort. Azula turned her gaze to the Easterner. "What? You had that wistful look on your face. You only get that way when you're plotting, or planning, or possibly scheming."

"Just remembering how your nation used to look on mine with pity, and how quickly that reversed," Azula said idly. Bi scowled, but didn't rise to the bait, which was a bit disappointing. She didn't want to think of herself as replacing Mai with a surrogate, but... she missed having somebody she could 'spar' with.

"Is Azula picking on the royalty again?" Sokka asked sarcastically from his own fire. "Do I need to come over there?"

"No, _Dad_," Bi said with equal sarcasm. "So how are we going to know when we've found these people, anyway? I mean, we're looking for a needle in a haystack. A needle shaped like a firebender, in a haystack full of death. A firebender shaped needle of death in a jungle," Bi blinked for a moment, then looked at the bottle she had been nursing to since they landed. She tipped it up, revealing its emptiness.

"Are you drunk?"

"Maybe a little."

Azula shook her head, turning back to where Ked easily hurled the roll of waterproof fabric over the framework which would support it; no base feat, because the canvas was actually quite heavy, but he made it look easy. Of course, he was remarkably strong. It came in handy in other areas, as well. It would probably rain soon, and having something to keep the weather off was a blessing she understood very well, especially after she, Mai, and Ty Lee got stuck in that monsoon in the East seven years ago. As soon as he had the canvas tucked into place, she ducked under it and rolled out her bedroll.

"You know, you could help a bit more around the camp," Ked said idly as he set up the flap which would properly allow entry and exit.

"Doing what?" Azula asked. "I cannot cook, I'm not as strong as you nor as swift as Ty Lee. At best, I would be getting in the way. My contribution is not screwing up everybody else's routine."

Ked leaned through the opening he'd created, a look of concern on his face. It faded quickly when he saw that she wasn't being self-deprecating for its own sake, not being unnecessarily down on herself. She was simply stating objective fact, something she accepted and expected others to do as well.

"Well, be that as it may, there's no harm in helping out," Ked said. "Who knows, you might find a talent you didn't expect."

Azula's lips pulled into a smirk. "Have you so quickly decided to cease doting on me? Oh, I guess the honeymoon is already over."

Ked leaned back in again, a wan look on his face. "That's just fighting dirty, Azula."

Azula nodded, then pulled her hair out of the way and lay back. She had gotten so used to this sort of thing, not proper bedding but a bedroll and the hard ground underneath her. It seemed like all of the best times of her life she was sleeping on the naked ground. Ked, his ministrations of the tent completed, crawled in beside her. With the two of them within at the same time, the tent quickly became comfortably warm.

"I notice you've been in a much better mood of late," Ked commented as he rolled out his own bedroll, its edge overlapping her own. "Since we came back to the Fire Nation, I mean. It must be nice to be home."

"In a way," she admitted. "But I don't think it's really about being home. It's more about being active. I hate being static, staying still. It makes me feel... useless. I don't enjoy that feeling."

"Why not?"

Azula had an urge for a glib response, but Ked deserved an actual answer, even if it was somewhat uncomfortable. "I always thought I had to be a certain kind of person. Striving, uncompromising, cruel. A warrior qua warrior. I had to be feared because that was the only way to control people. I invested a great deal of my life into... _being_ that person. When I'm idle, I start to question who I am. What I want. And that is very uncomfortable."

Ked nodded. "Well, what _do_ you want?"

Azula sighed. "I'm not entirely sure. Not what I thought I wanted, that's for certain," she muttered. Her lips pulled again, into that little smile she knew he liked. "But at least I'm in a position where I'm allowed to decide, again. At least I am in control of my own life."

Ked just nodded again. That smile grew a bit wider, a bit more hungry. "Oh, really?" Ked asked, grasping her next question before she even had a chance to ask it.

"Well, haven't you become quite the little mind reader?" she said, pulling closer to him. How could she _ever_ have thought that Chan was more handsome than this man? Well, the pretty one from the South Pole _was_ prettier, but that one had to have been some freak of nature to look that good.

"Why is it that every time you get introspective it ends up with us...?"

She cut him off by straddling him, putting a hand into his short hair and forcing his head down onto the pillowed mattress. If she wanted to, she could control him completely, direct his every move. Even though he was so much stronger than her that he could break her in half with his bare hands, she had control. And she deserved it. She earned it. "Are you _really_ going to complain right now?"

"No, ma'am," Ked said, his face pulling into a grin. It was the last coherent conversation that anybody would hear of those two until the sun rose over the jungle.

* * *

Bi wandered away from the camp, feeling that buzz she'd managed to get into start to ebb away as the night went on. The two couples had retired for the night, and at least one of them was involved in vocal and energetic love-making. As much as she wanted to simply raise a bottle to the lucky Tribesmen and offer an 'attaboy', it drove a wedge of envy into her. Not that she wasn't mushily, sickeningly in love like those people. That there was nobody else left. She had been alone since Jet died, and even then, things had been rocky towards the end.

She stumbled and face-planted in the sod, her alcohol muddled senses preventing her from effortlessly arresting her fall. She growled, pushing herself up, as the fuzziness of the alcohol in her veins couldn't quite hold back the stream of profanities in every language she knew. She let out a particularly vile swear when she decided to punch the ground, as though it had deliberately slighted her. She regretted it when a bloom of pain slowly worked its way through her via the wrist. She had the misfortune of punching a rock.

"Goddamn it, why can't anything ever go right for me?" Bi muttered, slumping against a mostly-rotten log, almost vanished under the plantlife using it as scaffolding towards their own ascendency. Gods, she could remember a time where she _wanted_ to be drunk. Where it was an option. The better option. Now, it had become the only option. And now, whenever she was sober, she just didn't know what to do with herself. And she hadn't the first idea how she ended up here. Things used to be so different. Things used to be better.

She let out a quiet, bitter laugh. Yeah, if she kept telling herself that, she might even start to believe it.

She had been alone for a long time. Mostly because there wasn't anybody else. She was the only one left. Everybody else had moved on. The world had moved on, and left Bi Bei behind. And there wasn't anybody she could talk to who understood. She made sure of that with a drunken, angry outburst. Bi leaned forward, cradling her head in her hands.

"Stop the world, please," she muttered. "I'd like to get off, now."

To Bi's credit, she did not cry.

She didn't have it in her.

* * *

The Palace was a flurry of activity, much of which confused the Avatar as he ambled through the vast, green and gold halls which he had helped knock down on two separate occasions. The situation here hadn't been the best. The month since Toph's coronation had been hectic with a side order of terrifying. It went against everything that Aang had been brought up to believe, letting people fight each other. But he recalled something that Katara had told him once, a long time ago. He might be the Avatar, but that didn't make him omnipotent.

"Excuse me, do you know where the Earth..." Aang attempted, but the mandarin rushed past without a second glance. Which was downright odd enough to make Aang scratch his head. Even though he'd promised not to let being Avatar go to his head, he was used to a certain amount of, if not reverence, at least respect. Now, he was being ignored as completely as some of the lowest of the servants. Momo, clinging to his shoulder, gave a confounded chirp of his own.

For just a moment, he stood in the hallway, looking befuddled. He considered flagging somebody else down, or even using his tremor sense to see if he could spot somebody more helpful. But that would have been trying to find a particular grain of sand in Si Wong. He idly reached back to scratch Momo's head. The lemur was getting old, there were no two ways about that. In the wild, lemurs seldom lived past ten years. Considering Momo had been at least a year old when Aang found him, that made him at least eleven. The little creature wasn't nearly as sprightly as he used to be.

"Man, what I wouldn't give for just a touch of that Avatar Serendipity right now," Aang said.

"Ah, there you are, Twinkletoes," Toph said, slugging him in the arm as she passed him from behind. It was enough of a jostle to make Momo give a startled screech and switch shoulders."I was about to send somebody to get ya'."

"Thank you, the universe," Aang said quietly.

"What was that?"

"Nothing. Hey, Toph?" she let out a grunt. "What's going on? Everybody's hustling for some reason, and nobody is talking to me."

"Oh, that must be because of the 'procession'," Toph said. Aang raised an eyebrow.

"What procession?"

Toph let out an exasperated sigh. "You really are oblivious, Twinkletoes. I don't care what you say. Well, things are slowing down in the Heel and south of the Divide, so I figured it's as safe a time as any to pay a visit to our favorite benevolent dictator."

"...What?"

"_Sparky_, Twinkletoes," she said with her usual, gung-ho enthusiasm. "I figure Crankypants and Moanie could use a bit of a pick-me-up, especially after the shit-storm that they've got, with that civil-war nonsense. Leave it to Nationals to fight amongst themselves, am I right?"

"So you're visiting Zuko? Is this really the best idea to do this right now? I mean, what about _this_ civil war?"

Toph scoffed and made a dismissive gesture. "Eh, it's bottled up for a while. And if I can't step away from the throne for one fricken month, then I must be doing something pretty stupid, am I right?"

"Yeah, I guess," Aang admitted.

"Also, I got something I want you to see. Mostly, 'cause I can't, and I need to be sure that the guy didn't screw me over," Toph said. It was then that Aang realized where he was going. They were walking along the hall which housed the portraits of the previous Earth Kings. Now, since the death of Kuei the 9th, who was himself the fifty second of the Shen Dynasty, there was a new dynasty. All of the old portraits had been moved, opening up room for what would be Toph's lineage. A gap stood, signifying the interregnum and King Bumi's stewardship. But there was only one portrait in place at the moment, sitting at the end of the hall, that caught Aang's eye. It was in something of a place of glory, Aang would say. "So, what'd'ya think?" Toph asked.

It was something. The frame of the portrait was almost two stories tall, and the whole thing was filled. A glance to one side showed Aang Kuei's portrait. It portrayed the late Earth King, his great and obviously exaggerated form – for the man had been slight and reedy in life, not this muscular brute – filling the frame, wrestling with Basco. It was titled 'Taming The Bear'. He then turned back to Toph's. While the two portraits were the same size, their subject matter was vastly different. Toph's portrait was dominated by the massive form of a badgermole, its black-and-white form facing off the work, its opaque eyes framing Toph's portrayal. Unlike her predecessors, her own form was positively tiny, taking up only a small portion of the canvas, exactly equivalent to her actual height. Her form was replicated with exacting detail; the smug smirk graced her painted face was uncannily Toph. Rusty chains were wrapped around the arms, and in her hands was the symbol of the Dai Li, which she was easily tearing in half. Her feet were bare, and she was slightly leaning one one of the massive paws of the badgermole.

"So?"

"So what?" Aang asked. "I mean, it looks like you. So that's something."

"Does the title fit?"

Aang glanced at the title. 'Actual Size'. Aang couldn't help but laugh at that. "Yeah. It really does."

"Awesome. I guess the artist is getting paid, and not thrown off a cliff," she said, turning away. Aang looked after her with an aghast look. "I'm joking. Gods, Aang, you really need to work on that sense of humor."

"My sense of humor is fine," Aang muttered.

Toph laughed to herself, deep and guffawing. When it died down to chuckling, she stopped for a moment. "Oh yeah, there's something you should probably know before I head out, because I'm pretty sure you're going to tag along."

"What's that?"

"I ran into Azula a couple of months ago. Had a bit of a scrap."

"**WHAT?**" Aang screamed, his fear almost catapulting him involuntarily into an Avatar State. "How could you not mention this?"

"I said I wouldn't. Besides, she ain't that bad when she ain't tryin' to kill ya'." Toph said with a dismissive wave. "You're just overreacting."

"Azula's been awake for two months and you say I'm overreacting? D...W... She could be plotting to kill Zuko right now!"

"She ain't."

Aang sputtered for a few moments. "And how can you be sure?"

"Because she isn't a killer like me," Toph said. She cast a glance over her shoulder at him, a purely cosmetic gesture considering she was blind. "You can learn a lot from somebody out of how they act in a fight. I mean, she didn't kill me."

"Probably because you won."

"Nah, she had me dead to rights," Toph said without a whisper of anger or regret. "It wouldn't surprise me if she was chilling back in the Fire Palace right now, makin' out with Sugar Queen or that Tribesman she's got at her beck and call."

"You should have told me."

"You sayin' it doesn't make it true," Toph pointed out. "Don't worry. We'll be leaving for Grand Fire in the morning."

"The morning? We should leave now!"

"Trust me, _you're_ not leaving right now," Toph said with a chuckle. Aang was half way through a demand as to why, when she turned, pounding her fist against the wall. A section of it slid down and away, creating an instant door. Aang's complaint died on his tongue, as he looked into bright blue eyes. "Yeah, Sweetness landed in town a couple hours ago. I thought you two might like some time to catch up."

It might be callus to say that Aang lost interest in Toph, but the truth was, the instant he saw Katara, everything else just went out of his mind. He took a step into the room. "Katara," he said. "It's... it's been a long time since I..."

He was cut off when Katara ran into his arms and locked into a passionate embrace. In that instant, how the two of them stayed apart for so long seemed utterly absurd. Aang tried to move to a more private area, but between their long-overdue reunion and his beautiful wife's... 'questing' hands, he didn't make it very far at all. The nearest closet, in point of fact.

If Aang had been listening, he would have heard Momo's indignant chatter at having been sequestered outside, and heard Toph sarcastically proclaim "Attagirl, Sweetness!"

But Aang's mind... and the rest of him... was somewhere else at the moment.

* * *

Azula perked up the instant that the smell hit her nose. "Do you smell that?" she asked of the other three in the howdah. Bi, who barely seemed conscious but still clung to the rail with a white-knuckled grip, didn't respond. Ked seemed a bit baffled, but Sokka tested the air himself.

"I smell a lot of things," he said. The area they were passing over now was a forest reclaiming the soil left in the wake of a volcanic eruption. The air here was harsh and caustic, it burned at the nose, from the open and active cone which dominated the skyline. The eruption couldn't have been more than ten years ago, but the trees were, however sparsely, already climbing the walls of the volcano again.

"Wood."

Sokka sniffed again, then nodded. "Right. That is burning wood," he confirmed, which was a bit of a relief in that she wouldn't have to convince him of the significance of it. The smell of burning wood here, now, without the radiating heat of the volcano spontaneously setting the trees ablaze, indicated only one thing; human civilization. So the rumors of him being an able tracker were not just smoke in the wind, as the saying went. He licked a finger and held it out for a moment, before rolling his eyes and slapping his forehead. He leaned over the crest of the howdah and had Ty Lee bring the great beast to a halt, then repeated the measure.

"Which direction?" she demanded.

"Up here it's easterly. Time of year... and the trade winds... It's the Year of the Monkey again, right?"

"Could we do this today?" She made sure not to hide her impatience. But he was ignoring her, his eyes up and away from all gazes, as he was obviously doing numbers in his head.

Sokka pointed, toward the open maw of the volcano. "The winds would have lifted it from the other side of the cone. Whoever's burning wood, would be there."

"Then we have our destination," Azula declared. The sky bison skirted wide around the volcano, which did not surprise Azula in the slightest. An airship wouldn't have been able to survive the heat coming out of that great pit, so a flesh-and-blood beast stood no chance in Hell.

"What are we going to do when we land there?" Ked asked her. She looked him square in the eyes and shrugged.

"I could claim that I am on something of a roll because of what we managed to pull off outside the city, but I am not arrogant... Anymore... Or at least, as much," Azula admitted. "Sometimes, one simply has to improvise based on the situation which presents itself. Much as I like to claim a master-plan brought down the Walls of Ba Sing Se, it was really just me playing the hand I was dealt. It turned out to be a spectacular hand, and one well played, if I do say so myself. Mother sometimes said that Agni plays dice with the universe. I find I am beginning to believe what it was that she meant."

"That's rather humble of you," Ked said with a smirk.

"Don't get used to it."

"I wouldn't dream of it."

The beast rounded the cone, and Azula's eyes widened just a touch at what she saw. Just as on the other side, the landscape had been wiped clean and purged by fire, but whereas the far side had been at the tender mercies of the lava until it could bear forward no further, on this other side, the magma flowed with rage and wrath and purpose... until it abruptly halted at a hard line, a wall made of its own substance, curling back on itself. Sokka too let out a low whistle at the spectacle.

"Well, that's a familiar sight," he uttered, but referencing what, Azula neither knew nor particularly cared, and couldn't see if she wanted to do either.

"And so is that," Ked said, pointing at the buildings, only visible from this angle and this direction because of the devastation wrought by the lava flow, the trees stripped away, showing architecture no Fire National would ever call their own, clad in gold so that even without the visible sun under its cultivated, camouflaging canopy, it still managed to glow. In the distance, it was oddly fuzzy, her eyes unable to properly focus on them. She made a point of not blaming Ked for her faulty eyes. They were still far better than no eyes at all.

"What do you mean?" Azula asked.

"Sokka, don't those look a bit familiar to you?" Ked asked instead. Azula grit her teeth at being ignored, but made no point out of it. Not yet, anyway.

"Now that you mention it, yeah."

"Coming in for a landing!" Ty Lee cried out enthusiastically. The beast let out a loud, low bellow to answer the airbender, before landing with a hard thump. Even Sokka was rocked by the landing.

"Man, Appa was always a lot more careful," the polymath complained.

"Appa was also a girl. Basu's a boy," Ty Lee shouted back, bounding up to balance on the horn of the howdah. Sweat was beading on the acrobat already, but it didn't seem to bother her in the slightest. Then again, considering she was a child of Di Huo, it was quite likely it really didn't. "Come on! I wanna see the Sun Warriors!"

The two Tribesman and Azula all shared a glance. Leave it to Ty Lee to make this task seem like it was a cheerful, happy adventure like the one's they'd undertaken in their youth. It wasn't. This was deadly serious. And despite that, Azula would do nothing. Ty Lee deserved to hold her happy expectations. Azula didn't deserve to take that away from her.

"Perhaps I should lead the way," Azula said. "I am the one who will be doing the talking after all."

"They don't speak Huojian, remember?" Sokka asked. Azula shot him a glare, and he shrugged. "What? I call it as I see it."

The place they landed the beast was baked and black, and a short distance away from civilization proper, and hidden from sight. The last thing Azula needed was to land in the midst of an ambush assaulted on all sides. She might have been born lucky, but she wasn't going to stretch it so far.

"So what's the big..." Sokka begun.

"Improvise," Azula cut him off. He pondered that for a moment, then gave something between a shrug and a nod.

"Oh, this is going to be so much fun and I'll be able to meet an entirely new people and talk to them and learn all kinds of neat things and I wonder if they have any pretty dresses or..." Ty Lee launched into a solid ramble, which continued in the background, despite Azula trying with uncharacteristic gentleness to calm, quiet, and pacify her. They were trying to be stealthy, and her exuberance was not helping in that task.

Azula quickly reached up her hand, clapping it over Ty Lee's mouth and silencing her. She shared a glance with the two Tribesmen. Ked in particular seemed on edge. Bi looked like she was having a hard time keeping her hands from shaking, but not from either fear or anticipation, she could tell that much. "Mts Rng Nzln?" Ty Lee mumbled.

"What was that sound?" Sokka whispered.

Azula's expression darkened. "We're about to be attacked."

She removed her hand, and in a single motion, swung her arm out to one side, erupting a detonation toward a shadow that her eyes could no longer pierce. The tree which grew hard through the volcanic rock buckled and bent, but the desired effect was sending the man hiding in its boughs into the dirt. He sprung to his feet, after a moment to collect his wits, and shouted something in a language which seemed to tickle at Azula's ear, but she couldn't place it. It must have been Hui.

Ty Lee let out a surprised squeak, which doubled when other shadows erupted into forms which advanced on them like a pack of wolves. Some of them brandished weapons of wood and obsidian, their brittle blades so wickedly sharp they could purportedly decapitate a Komodo Rhino in a single blow. Azula twisted and bent low, crafting an explosion before them, which, shaped against the ground, hurled them into the air as neatly as any blast of airbending. Another twisted her grasp off of her stone weapon and spun into an arc kick, golden flames twisting off of her heel. Azula slashed it apart with her own cyan flames. The firebender before her stared in surprise, golden eyes wide. Others, though, were not so distracted. Two of them tried to flank the group, coming in from two angles. She was not fit to get a dragon's wings today, though.

She vaulted up, casting out a blast of flame from each of a fist and foot, blowing the two away and landing in a crouch. "Any backup?" Azula asked sarcastically. Only then did she hear the sound of her fellows arming themselves. She heard battle joined behind her, her companions no doubt and properly using non-lethal means. The last thing she needed was to have to convince these people against a preexisting slaughter.

The woman ahead of her took a step back, abandoning her feeble weapon to drop into a firebending stance. But it was the kind of stance which she had only seen once before; in the use of her brother, when they had fought during the Agni Kai. So that was where Zuzu learned his tricks. "So you think you can repeat my brother's performance?" she asked, a dark smirk on her face. The woman obviously didn't get what Azula was saying, but launched forward into an attack, a swift, twisting barrage of flame. Azula had to dive aside from that attack before. Now, she just did as her body demanded, acted on her instincts. She slapped her hands together, and felt the plentiful energy flowing through her body form a blade beyond her fingertips. The attack which would have otherwise been unblockable parted and slid past her to either side.

Azula pressed forward, as the woman took a step back. She lashed forward with great arcs of fire and flame, bolts and streams and pillars erupting from the hands and feet of the girl. In truth, she wasn't bad. She showed a lot more skill than most firebenders Azula knew of in that age bracket. But this girl was no Azula, not in skill nor in power. Azula kept advancing, the smirk on her face growing with every step she gained on the skilled youth. In short order, they were firebending at a range usually reserved for knife-fights. A smirk became a superior smile, as she guided the hands of her opponent away from her, moving closer, waiting for her time. Then, with a shatterpoint of pristine clarity, she reached forward her hand and flattened it on the girl's forehead. Azula swept her foot behind the stance of the girl, and pushed. She fell hard onto her back, Azula's hand continuing to press her into the dirt.

Azula's fingers ignited a lancet of blue fire, holding it toward the girl. "Everybody had better stop!" she demanded. The woman stopped fighting, her golden eyes locked on that blue flame in honest and unmistakable fear. Wait, that wasn't fear... Awe?

Ty Lee started to shout herself, in that same unintelligible language which they had used. The sounds of combat ceased behind her, and Azula turned. Sokka and Ked were back to back, sword and mass of water at hand, respectively. Bi had her blades out, and was glancing between two fighters who still circled her warily, while a third moaned painfully nearby. Ty Lee had a neat stack of paralyzed Sun Warriors beside where she was standing. The woman under Azula's hand said something.

"What did she say?"

"She told them all to stand down," Ty Lee answered.

"Tell them I want to speak to their leadership," Azula said. Ty Lee translated, and the girl looked a bit ashamed, her hands falling to the ground next to her as she spoke. Azula turned to the airbender. "Well?"

"She said she'll bring us into the town, but we'll have to disarm."

"I think she doesn't understand the position she finds herself in," Azula said. Ty Lee rather slumped for a moment.

"Um, Azula? She said if we don't disarm, then the _others_ will disarm us," Ty Lee explained. Azula looked around. What people? Ty Lee pointed, and Azula still couldn't see them. With a groan, she pulled out her spectacles and put them on. Leaping into focus were dozens if not a solid hundred of men in linen armor and staring hard at them. Bows and flames abounded, waiting for the signal.

Azula sighed, then pulled back, snuffing out the lancet of flame she had manifested and letting the girl rise to her feet. She turned her bespectacled gaze toward where they buildings lay, and beheld an older man approaching from that direction. His clothing was of two contrasting colors: predominantly the bright and scarlet red which was ubiquitous everywhere in the Fire Nation save Azuli, it seemed even brighter since it was paired with just a touch of electric blue. He was pale faced, his eyes very bright gold, his hair long and grey as slate. She was looking at a man who had quietly and covertly descended from her own ancestors.

"_Outsiders are forbidden in this place_," he said, using Ty Lee as a medium through which the two parties could understand each other.

"You are the Sun Warriors, correct? The ancient firebenders of the Lost Hui?"

"_We are not lost,_" the elder answered. "_It is you, who are lost._"

"I suppose there's a point to you turning my words around as you do," Azula said. "But honestly, I don't care what it is. You are firebenders, and your Fire Lord requires your service to the realm."

"_We owe no fealty to your __Fire Lord__,_" he answered. "_Others have come before you. Some of them hunted the last dragon, Shao. Others, tried to steal our treasures and some even deface our history. All of them were sternly rebuked. And now you come here demanding fealty. You are either ignorant or confident to the point of arrogance_."

Azula had considered that they would not bend knee to the Fire Lord. However, not knowing the situation in full, she decided against making plans that she knew she wouldn't be able to salvage if and when they fell apart. "I am neither. I am offering you a means toward an ends that you will find useful. 'Sternly rebuking' me won't save you from what is coming."

"_Is that a threat, young woman?_" he asked, his tone flat as far as Azula could tell. A smirk came to Azula's face.

"Not at all. It is a warning. Ty Lee? Call your bison," Ty Lee translated that part too, before she caught on and leaned back, whistling behind her. At first, nothing happened, but the excited thumping of fifteen tonnes on six legs quickly drew the attention of a great many firebenders surrounding the group. Quite a few of them had to bound out of the way when Basu came running through the group and tackled the airbender, nuzzling her against the ground with its great head. Sokka had the great misfortune of being driven into the ground by the display of animal-to-human affection.

"_You will not escape, outsider,_" the elder said.

"I didn't intend to," Azula said. "You recognize this beast, correct?"

"_It is a sky bison. That is obvious. Our relationship with the Air Nomads was amicable, until __your people wiped them out,_" he said with a tone of anger. Sokka dragged himself out of the crater which he'd been smooshed into, muttering darkly in his native tongue.

"Indeed. So why, I ask, does this one have Ty Lee as a master? If the airbenders are truly gone, why does she bear the marks?"

"_She does not bear them all. She is a pale imitator and a fraud–_" this time, it was Ty Lee who cut him off, ignoring the rest of his statement and gaining a look of almost comedic annoyance. She cast out a hand, and a blast of wind knocked him back a step, before she crossed her arms under her bosom and started tapping her foot. She was the portrait of benign wrath, if such a concept could be said to exist. "_Alright. So you have an airbender. This is not unexpected. The Avatar came to our people not long ago, and he was an airbender himself._"

"Ty Lee, tell him something. Are you an airbender?" Ty Lee answered the affirmative, in Hui, to the elder. "Are you an Air Nomad?" This time, a negative. He seemed confused by this. "The Air Nomads are indeed extinct. As I hear, even the Avatar no longer claims that culture for his own. However, there is a new generation of people taking to the sky. People who will not respect your desire for privacy."

"_We have nothing to share with airbenders._"

"I was not talking about airbenders," Azula said. "They were simply an example. The more troublesome presence you will find yourself confronting are the firebenders. Your culture may well be the oldest on this Earth. You don't know the advancements that the rest of the people whom you've spawned achieved in the interim," she pointed at Sokka. "This man is the patron of human flight. He put firebenders in the sky."

"It wasn't exactly what I was going for, but..." Sokka muttered, rubbing the back of his neck.

"_What lunacy is this? Firebenders cannot fly. Only airbenders can fly._"

"Look me in the eye and tell me that I'm lying," Azula said. "Firebenders now own the sky, as they own the seas. Your people might have been hidden by the long stretches of jungle before, but you cannot hide yourself from above. Not completely, and not forever. Sooner or later, others will come. A trickle at first, then a torrent, then a flood. Thousands of my kind, treading on your lands. You will be swept away."

"_We will fight them._"

"You won't have to," Azula said, raising one finger to make a point. "You are in a position to make yourself heroes in the Fire Nation. The long centuries of your cloister are coming to an end, one way or the other. The only option you truly have is whether you are dragged kicking and screaming into the flow of history, or if you stand tall with the tide."

"_You speak oddly,_" the elder said, a suspicious look on his face. "_Almost like a waterbender. What firebender would think in water?_"

Azula was a bit confused at that, herself. What did he mean? Rather than be paralyzed by it, she simply nodded toward Ked, who had re-flasked his water. "I choose my companions very carefully. They have taught me much."

"Aw, Azula, that's so sweet!" Ty Lee said.

"Ty Lee, please," Azula prompted, and Ty Lee continued passing the messages back and forth. As she was doing so, the girl that Azula had faced spoke to the elder, her words flying fast and furious. When she reached her terminus, the elder's brow rose. He spoke to her briefly, and Ty Lee was silent, until Azula rolled her eyes and prompted Ty Lee to keep translating.

"But they're not talking to you."

"Still, it behooves me to know what they're talking about."

"Oh, right."

"_The Blue Fire is a heady charge to make, granddaughter. Are you sure about what you saw?_"

"_I could not be more sure,_" the girl answered. "_She is strong. Frighteningly strong. It was like she was toying with me._"

She had been.

"_The energybenders were unmade long ago. Their secrets are forever lost. But we might still turn this to our favor,_" he turned to the party. "_If you really think yourself capable of demanding our fealty, then you are mistaken. But if you request our aid, we might be more able to accommodate._"

"And what marks that distinction?" Azula asked. So he didn't suspect that she was overhearing their private conversation, did he?

"_We would gladly work to the benefit of one of our own,_" he said, smoothing the electric blue fringes of his robes.

Azula's eyes narrowed behind the corrective lenses. "I see," she said. "So. What do you expect done to prove our worthiness to join your littl... to join your tribe?"

The man nodded. "_I am Chanticuhtli, the High Chief of this Fire Tribe of Sun Warriors. If you would join it, your worth must be measured, your will, tested. Your abilities, gauged. If you are worthy, then you will stand amongst your shared ascendants. If you fail, you will feed Camaxtli!_" he pointed to the volcano overlooking them.

Azula glanced to her companions. This would take some explaining. But she could see no other options, and not for any lack of looking. She searched the scene over in her mind almost a dozen times, but this was the only path that she could see. It was the only one which didn't result in their failure or death, anyway.

Azula had a scowl on her face when she answered. "Very well. Prepare your tests, High Chief Chanticuhtli. We will join your Sun Warriors."

* * *

**To Be Continued in 'Into The Inferno'**

* * *

**Let it be said that I don't do things half-assed if I can manage it. Bi's alcoholism isn't addiction for addiction's sake, and I don't do 'funny alcoholism'. In fact, her drinking (however liver-killingly intense it is) is only a symptom of a much worse problem that she's trying to medicate. She has an extremely severe case of post traumatic stress disorder, the same affliction which drove Longshot to leave her in Fallapa and give up fighting completely. Out of the entire cast, she and Azula were the most damaged people I could overanalyse. There is a reason you don't use kids to fight wars. It destroys their innocence and turns them into... well... for lack of a better term, Bi. Just angry, self-medicating, nihilistic and passively suicidal. The fact that she can still function even as well as she does is a testiment to her outstanding level of willpower and fortitude; most people would have just curled up and died long ago. But she's running out. She's getting tired, losing momentum, and grinding to a halt.**

**Hrm. You'd think I had some sort of fetish, the way that I seem to drift towards writing women with severe issues.**

_Leave a review, or I eat the hostages._

_Wait, that's not right..._


	19. Fire Tribe Part 2: Into The Inferno

**Me: Hey everybody! Guess...**

**You: You're behind writing the finale because you spent most of Friday afternoon waging war against an insane God Emperor and freeing the lost civilization of Atlantis from his draconic clutches whilst beginning the apotheosis of the entire human race?**

**Me: ...Well, yes, actually. That's exactly what happened. Anyway. Sokka does indeed get the best lines, but that's a function of that he is written both her and in canon as being the type of person to perfectly combine just the right amount of intellect with a bottomless reservoir for snark. He's what happens when a fantasy character strives for realism. Bi, on the other hand, is when a fantasy character has reality forced onto her. She's not pathetic for not seeking help; she's too damaged to even understand that she needs help. Much the same way that most people live with depression without seeking any treatment, because they cannot see any other way of living, so too can she not conceive of any other kind of life for herself. If there is anything pathetic about her, it is that, and only in the oldest sense of the word pathetic. She is a character of pathos, certainly.**

**I like this chapter, because it gave me an opportunity for Azula to be Azula, to show her metamorphasis was a growth, rather than a format-and-reinstall. She admits what vulnerabilities she has and works to circumvent them. Even if it means that she has to wear those _stupid_ glasses. She is a case of good-is-not-nice, if you begin with the premise that Azula is good. I prefer to think that she exists outside the DnD alignment grid. Before, she was Lawful Evil. Now, she's True Azula. Say what you will about Nietszche (And believe me, I have no shortage of vitriolic rants I could direct against that syphilitic), he would likely quite respect her for forging her own moral code and adhering to it. **

* * *

Yui tensed up the moment she saw him. It wasn't because she was afraid; he'd been very careful not to be that sort of asshole around her. No, she was tensing up because he was, and she had an empathic streak that the real Azula couldn't hope to match. She turned away from the lines she was learning, for some speech she was expected to give later in the afternoon, and moved to him quickly enough.

"You don't look so well, Chan. What's wrong?" she asked.

Chan rubbed his eyes. He hadn't been sleeping so well. He also hadn't been sleeping here. His problems were his, he didn't see any point in bringing the actress into them. And since they would needlessly endanger her... "Nothing's wrong. Just haven't been sleeping so well."

Yui gave him a questioning look which for just a split second made her seem exactly like the woman she survived only on dint of impersonating. "What aren't you telling me, Chan?"

Chan shook his head. "Yui, if you saw something bad going on, would you do something about it?"

"Of course."

"But what if that bad thing was something you didn't know you could fix? What if it was something that you had no place or power to stop?"

"Chan, don't play hypotheticals with me. Just tell me what's wrong," Yui demanded.

Chan sighed. "The reason I've been staying away is... well, I saw something down in the vault a few days ago. Something that just wasn't right. And it's bothering me in a way I didn't think possible. I mean, he's just an Easterner. An urchin. But still."

"Chan," Yui said, her tone softer this time. "Why don't you start at the beginning?"

Chan nodded, and gave her the bullet points of his little misadventure in the lower levels of the Yuchiban palace, down to that long abandoned corridor and the thick walled vault. "What I don't understand is what they want that kid for, anyway. She's maybe twelve, thirteen years old."

"Are you sure it was a girl?"

"Not really. It was hard to tell," Chan admitted. The child could have been either.

"What did they call him? Or her?"

Chan pondered for a moment. After a brief introspection, the name he'd heard mentioned drifted back up to the surface. "Trama."

Yui raised an eyebrow at that. "I think I know what they're using him/her for," she said quietly.

"What? What could they need a child for?"

"That child is apparently the strongest earthbender since King Bumi. A lot of people think that Trama is some illegitimate offspring of his," she informed. Chan doubted that last bit, though; he had heard many things about the now late King of Omashu, and chief among them was that he was just too strange to breed. But the first bit started to make things slide into place. "I think this might have something to do with that man, Long Feng. He's an Easterner. Maybe they're using him to boost their side of this civil war somehow."

Chan shook his head. "Jeong Jeong and Long Feng are at each other's throats, but Jeong Jeong seems to be the one holding the leash. For the moment, anyway. This is something else," the notion dawned on him. "RIGHT! Of course! The devastation in Grand Fire!"

Yui looked confused.

"When Azula, the real Azula, broke her father out of Ashfall, somebody went absolutely rhinoshit crazy in the Lower City," Chan said, beginning to pace. "I mean, that kid's obviously not completely in his mind. They're trying to break his will, if they haven't already."

"We have to do something about this," Yui said forcefully.

"Yeah, but what?" Chan asked. The two shared a moment of consideration. Two sets of eyes, golden and brown, met. "We're going to rescue him, aren't we?" Chan asked. Yui nodded with a smirk. "Do you have a plan?"

"Not even a twinkling," she admitted. "I usually leave that to other people."

"Well, that could be a problem, because if he snaps, we might end up with a mountain on our heads."

"Then we make sure he doesn't snap."

Chan chuckled at that. "Such faith in humanity."

She smiled at that, the bright and angelic smile which Azula could only replicate in dishonesty. "I learned from a very fine example," she said, running her hand along his arm before moving past him to the desk. She flipped her 'lines' over and motioned him to her side. "If we're going to do this, we're going to need a few things. Agni's Blood, I can't believe we're finally getting away from here."

"Says who?"

"Do you really think we can hide a mentally unstable extraordinarily powerful earthbender under our bed?" Yui asked. Chan scowled. "When we do this, we leave. It might not be perfect, but it has to be better than what the poor child is enduring now."

Chan sat down at the corner of the table and tented his fingers under his nose. "As you wish, Yui," he said, as the woman began to plot.

* * *

**Chapter 19: Fire Tribe Part 2: Into The Inferno**

* * *

Azula was already awake when the sun rose, and faced the firebenders with steady, alert gaze. They no doubt intended to come upon her unawares and leave her off balance for whatever little tests and rituals they had planned. If they were disappointed in their attempt, they did not show it. Ty Lee was also awake, but that was no great surprise; just as she had during their childhoods, the airbender required very little sleep. Ked was also up, but that was a function of him being slightly nocturnal, and oddly pious. He offered prayer to the setting moon. She let him. It wasn't hurting anything, after all.

Sokka and Bi, on the other hand, might as well have been dead for all they stirred.

"So," Azula began, as the lanky man with the long pony-tail emerging from an otherwise shaved head opened his mouth. He seemed a bit chagrined at that. "What little tasks are you going to be doling out for us today? And it had better be just today, because we're on something of a tight schedule."

The rat-faced man turned to Ty Lee as she produced a no-doubt sweetened version of what Azula had just said. Ty Lee, universally accepted as the dimmest of the Sisters Baihu, now acting as the vital translator in a mission of global import. Azula would have loved to see the looks on their old teachers faces at that sort of realization. The man was annoyed at being interrupted and cut off by both the outlander and her interpreter, and motioned at the others.

"_They should get up. You are all going to need to show your fire,_" he said.

Azula raised an eyebrow. "That might be more difficult than you know. I am the only firebender amongst us."

"_There are many flames, girl. Yours is only the most obvious._"

"Great, cryptic riddles," Azula muttered. She turned to her friend. "Do you remember what I did to the last man who tried to string me along with crypticism and half-truths."

"You set him on fire."

"Tell him that."

He was obviously not amused. But still, Azula reached over to the tin cup they had been allowed to drink from, and took a scoop of warm water, which she hurled onto Sokka's face. He woke up sputtering and flailing, his hands forming into chops as he bounded to his feet. He wasn't wearing pants, which made the sight slightly ridiculous. "What? Did we get captured again?"

"Did you what?" Azula asked. Sokka blinked a few times as his brain caught up with the daybreak. His hands dropped, and he glanced down to his shamelessly flaunted underwear, and let out an annoyed sigh.

"I never get captured with _pants_, do I?" he muttered. That was a story Ty Lee would no doubt relate to Azula at some point, whether she wanted to hear it or not. Probably not. He reached over and gave Bi a quick shove. She muttered something, sitting up, her untidy hair falling around her face. When she rose into the light, she looked at least half dead, her skin discolored and bruised despite Ked's ministrations last night. She was also sweating sheets. "You alright?"

"I'm up," Bi muttered, slowly getting to her feet. She moved with all the sprightliness of an enfeebled pensioner. But the look on her eyes said that she was going to punch the next person to question her state, so Azula let the woman be. She turned back to the rat-faced one.

"That is us. What do you want?"

"_You will join us at the mouth of Camaxtli. There, your capacity with firebending will be tested. If you fail, you will not be alone in paying the price._"

"So this is what you do to every prospective firebender in your tribe? This is your rite of passage?"

The man glanced back to her, surprised that she would question him. "_Of course it is._"

"You're lying," Azula said. "Not all of you are firebenders. Sending a non-firebender into the crater of an active volcano is highly effective population control, but not anything else. What are you really doing?"

"_It is not your place to ask questions._"

"Then I refuse your authority to state conditions," Azula said. "I will not feed my companions to a volcano arbitrarily."

"Oh, that's nice. She won't chuck us into the volcano unless she's got a _reason_," Sokka snarked. The rest ignored him.

"_Chanticuhtli wants you to prove yourself there._"

"Then _I_ will prove _myself_ there. Exactly what he intended – and exactly as I agreed – and not one whit more," Azula said. Mai might have gotten the political mind of their group, but it was burningly helpful that some of it had 'rubbed off' on Azula. The man's mouth pursed as he tried to justify himself without outright saying 'because I said so'. Despite their best efforts, they knew they were negotiating from unstable footing.

"_They... will not be involved,_" the man muttered. "_But they must be present. That is part of the ritual._"

There, a life-or-death test which wouldn't be muddied by her having to babysit the rest of them. That was a mark in her favor, at least. She gave the man a nod, and stepped out of the odd, slope-sided building that they had been given leave to use. Azula had traveled far and wide in her youth, but never seen architecture like this. Ked had, though. In the North Water Tribe. The moment Ked mentioned that, Azula knew exactly what was going on. There was much more to these people and his than met the eye.

"What is your name? I cannot simply refer to you as 'Chanticuhtli's lackey' for the duration of my stay here. For one thing, it takes too long to say," Azula demanded, falling in beside him, but not letting the others behind stray from her sight for long. She was not going to have them suddenly vanish and appear bound and helpless during her task. She wasn't an idiot and didn't feel like having to deal with that sort of distraction. The man seemed doubly annoyed that she not only still plumbed for information, but had the gall to match his stride rather than be escorted like some felon. His discomfort amused Azula.

"_I am Om__é__eotl, the master of rituals,_" he answered tersely.

"Some sort of priest, then?" he scowled. "Well then, what is the task I am to perform?"

"_Only Chanticuhtli may speak of it. The rite is sacred and must be kept secret from the eyes and ears of those not prepared. It is not something we..._"

"Blah blah blah," Azula interrupted. "If you're going to lie to me, at least put some effort into it. I'm not some idiot who fell off the back of a turnip wagon." Oméeotl glared, and even darker when Azula's smirk appeared. "Surely you can tell the person who you are giving an impossible task the nature of that impossible task?"

Oméeotl grumbled. "_Very well. You must retrieve something from the maw of the volcano. That is all I will say._"

"I see. And you had intentions of making that something being a choice between completing your little challenge and saving my companions, voiding the former and destroying my right of progress?"

Oméeotl glared, but said nothing. It was as much as admitting it. And she was glad she was keeping vigil on the others, because Bi in particular looked like she wasn't up to being a distressed damsel. Azula didn't doubt that Bi would rather die than take on that role, and considering her state of health at the moment, she very well might. Much as Azula wanted to rattle Oméeotl's cage even more, she knew that there was a fine line between a rattle and prodding the platypus-bear. If she antagonized him too far, he would lash out at her despite any logical reason not to. It was a balancing act, keeping him just angry enough to cloud his judgment, but not so angry that he abandoned judgment entirely. In this case, it meant leaving him to stew the whole way up the volcano.

"Are you all still with me?" Azula asked.

"What do you mean?" Bi asked, her teeth clattering as she shivered despite the heat and copious amounts of sweat she was shedding.

"They're trying to split us up, use us against her," Sokka answered. Ty Lee reflexively clung to Sokka's arm. Ked, though, just looked at everybody nearby like they were all brandishing knives. They may as well have been.

"That's not nice."

"People aren't," Azula said. "They'll use anything at their grasp to gain advantage over others. Even if it means hurting people who have nothing to do with their conflict. Whatever good people have inside them quickly flees when they have their back to the wall. Isn't that right, Sokka?"

"Hey, leave me out of this," Sokka said. "I've never hurt anybody who didn't deserve it."

Ked brandished his left hand, with the hard scar where he'd had to reattach most of it.

"Alright, _almost_ never," Sokka amended.

"I'm referring to that little psychosis you slip into any time you get angry enough."

"What is she talking about?" Ty Lee asked.

"Nothing," Sokka said darkly, and pointedly. Oh, so he hadn't told her? Well, the truth was going to come out sooner or later. It would be on his head when it did.

"Let's face it, you Tribesmen can be downright goddamned scary," Bi muttered.

Azula was going to make a sarcastic comment of agreement when Oméeotl cut them all off, pointing to a path cleft in the rim of the cone. The cone itself only got steeper the further up they went, so this point had either been cut, blown, or possibly manipulated out of the volcano itself to bypass those last few dozen paces which were almost completely vertical. The path was open above, which made sense to keep it from being a pipe for deadly heat, and it had the bubbly, rippling stone of hardened lava for a floor. The stone was no hotter than any other, which was good, because she doubted her ability to walk on superheated rock, even with these Tribesmens' boots. The cleft grew hotter as she pressed on, until they reached the nearest point on its far side, and the others clustered at the entrance. Azula's glare let all those know, despite any drift in language, that her friends would not take one more step beyond this point save at her leisure.

Chanticuhtli was waiting for them, his winter robes doffed and his chest bare to the elements. Despite his age, he was in very good shape; in many ways, he resembled Ked's father, albeit with hair and much paler of skin. He had a scowl which could have come from Ked's family tree as well. "_You have come,_" Chanticuhtli said. He cast a glance at Oméeotl, who shook his head with an angry look. "_You no doubt wonder what your task in this place is?_"

Azula raised an eyebrow, and waited. When it became obvious that she was going to make him say it, he continued.

"_During the summer months, we keep a priceless, irreplaceable icon of our culture in a temple to the east. But during the cold winter, we must bring it back to the place where it was found. Here. __Every year, prospective firebenders must lay hands upon the Sunstone and understand their place in the culture, if they are to be considered adult members of this Fire Tribe. This is done in the summer Solstice. Since you came to us, now, and demanding you not wait, then you must find your own way,_" he said, pointing across the roiling sea of glowing, molten rock. Along that edge, there was just a glimmer of gold, sitting on an outcropping which had been crudely carved into proper shape.

"So that's it? Touch the stone and know who I am?" Azula asked.

Chanticuhtli smirked. "Yes it is. You speak with great confidence, young girl. This is not a task to be undertaken lightly."

Azula nodded and turned to face the volcano before her. It was a deadly, dangerous puzzle, but still a puzzle. Azula excelled in these sort of mental challenges. She reached to the hard case at her side and extracted those spectacles that the doctors in Kad Deid told her she needed to wear, put them on her face, and sat on the almost painfully hot stone. She laced her fingers under her nose, and she pondered. There was a solution. She just had to find it.

* * *

There was some irony in the fact that she had returned to Grand Ember during the height of this civil war. In a way, Grand Ember was what started all of this, long before that Easterner got his claws into the machine. It was also odd, and no small bit shameful, to think of the person she had been back then, the kind of woman who would put all of this in motion. History, Ursa had discovered, had a sort of momentum about it. Once inertia was overcome, it took far more effort to stop something than anybody could have estimated when it was at rest. Her daughter claimed that this was her own mess to clean up; Ursa knew better. It was two decades and more in the making, but this mess belonged to Ursa, as well.

Ursa rested her chin on the heel of a hand as she perused the scrolls before her, digging into them and hoping that something would pop to the surface if she read it hard enough. In truth, she had been doing this for days, and the contents of this scripture was beginning to blur together. She might have gotten away with merely scanning them and moving on, but she dared miss nothing. She wanted to see her family again. Nothing would get in the way of that. Certainly not her own impatience.

The smell of very good tea dragged Ursa's attention away from a world of words and dusty history and back into the world of life and war and tea. The first notion that flit through her mind before her mind caught up with her nose was that Iroh had somehow appeared out of nowhere, tea set in tow. The reality was far more mundane; a petite woman with the parchment complexion and green eyes of the East, smiling a catlike smile as she poured. "The Whaleshman said that you'd been at this for hours, and you could use a pick-me-up," she said, her Huojian proficient, but still strongly accented with the tones of Ba Sing Se.

Ursa took the cup, and eyed it suspiciously. "I am not one to accept tea from a stranger," Ursa said, setting it down slightly further away.

"Why? Reuven said you would enjoy it."

"Reuven is my servant, not my wetnurse," Ursa said, turning back to the page.

"Oh, come on," the woman said. She took the cup herself and drank from it, with a look which clearly said 'satisfied?'. She poured a second.

"You have come a long way to be here, Easterner," Ursa said distractedly.

"All the way from Ba Sing Se," she confirmed Ursa's assumption. "What are you looking for, anyway?"

"I don't see what business that is of yours," Ursa said, raising an eyebrow over her golden eyes. The woman shrugged innocently.

"What? I like to know things. It's good for business to know what people are interested in," her expression became focused as she read over Ursa's elbow. "Spirits, huh? Talked to a shaman? That'd be your best bet."

"Not for this," Ursa said. She knew that the woman wasn't going to just wander away, so she tried a different tactic, and put on a polite smile. "What is your name, girl?"

"Jin," she answered. She leaned past and picked up a scroll which was not writ on paper, as the others, but carefully burnt into hide. It was scribed in the language of the Tribesmen, which was why Ursa had moved it to the side. It was a language only a few tens of thousands in the entire world could speak. Ursa was not one of them. "'A conversation with the Watcher of the Pillars', by Sishqi," Jin read. "Hmm. No wonder you've been having trouble. This is just opinion and hearsay."

"You can read Yqanuac?" Ursa asked, genuinely surprised.

"Yeah, picked it up a few years back after the Fall. It doesn't come up often, but it makes me very popular when the Tribesmen traded here before this... well, whatever it is," she said distractedly. So Reuven was thinking beyond his mere desire for her temporal safety. She couldn't say it was unexpected. For all he was a loyal minion, he was also an intelligent one. If only he could stop treating her like she was some sort of invalid. Contrary to popular belief, the elegant master of Whalesh politics had been in her fair share of brawls. Some of which _she'd_ started.

Ursa restored that polite smile to her face and took the cup. "I must thank you for the tea, at least. What are you owed?" she asked, finally taking a sip. When she did, her eyes widened, and she stared at the cup. It was like a sunrise on her tongue. For a split second, she lost the ability to speak and her body went into an involuntary shiver as the euphoria of the fluid made its careless way down into her stomach. When it finally hit bottom, she actually let out something of a grunt, and found her hands grasping hard on the reading desk she had claimed. And Jin was smirking.

"I think the look on your face makes it all worthwhile," Jin said brightly.

"Where did you learn to make tea like that?" Ursa asked.

"I learned in Ba Sing Se. I learned from the greatest tea-maker who ever lived," she said with a note of pride. Iroh. It could be nobody else. Ursa sipped the tea again. The effect, since it didn't blindside her, was less pronounced, but it was still spectacular tea. Was this the Dragon of the West trying to send some sort of message? Iroh always had a sideways view of reality, especially since Lu Ten's death. If that were the case, what exactly was he trying to tell her? Ursa considered this for a moment, but decided that it was at best irrelevant and at worst a psychotic delusion. There was no way her ex-brother-in-law was that subtle, and that far reaching.

"I'll see to it that you're paid well for the service. The tea was exceptional," Ursa said, turning back to the scrolls, and pointedly ignoring the woman who had intruded. It took all of her combined willpower to not continue nursing the tea while she was still being watched. After a minute of silence, the girl finally got the clue and left, but not without another bright and cheery invitation to come to her tea house in the city. With the current spate of xenophobia amongst the Embiar, the Ebon Dragon Tea House could probably use all the patronage it could get.

In silence and solitude, Ursa returned her attention to the scrolls. Curses. She had gathered everything that there was to find on the powers reputed to exist in the world, independent of the elemental martial arts. They would not be capable of something like this. The rest fell into one overarching category; shamanism. A rite invoked with a spirit was known to create effects which no scientific force could understand, from unusual fertility or barrenness in people, to abundance or scarcity of crops, to unnatural luck, in both directions. But nothing she read was this intricate. Nothing had such a high price or difficult demands. All spirits had a ban, something that they couldn't not do. If she could find the spirit which she was bound by, and discover its ban, she could destroy the curse prematurely, and not have to bother with the insanity of finding which two tribes needed to be reunited. Agni only knew how many of those bloody things there were in the world.

But despite all of her work, she still felt like she was overlooking something. She just couldn't imagine what.

* * *

Azula rose from the superheated stone, her eyes locked on the target ahead of her. She had plans. Once, recently and a lifetime ago, it would have been one plan, so intricate that it would be stunning in its utilization and completion. Now, she eschewed a single perfect plan for as many half-decent plans as needed, so long as _one_ of them worked. She cast a brief glance to the others, where they were gathered in the cleft. Oméeotl looked even more annoyed, but she didn't care, so long as the man kept his word. The others, fatefully enough, were exactly where she left them. Good. Smart man.

It was galling to admit that with the spectacles on, she _could_ actually see better. Even the distance didn't bother her, nor the sharp gradient between darkness and light in here. Might as well face it. She needed glasses. With a sigh, she took a step forward, and tried something. She began to sweep her hands toward her, as though billowing in a pleasant aroma. In truth, she was reproducing a form she had done without thought in Hachiman, when Sokka had ambushed them. Firebending was all about manipulating the trinity of flame. Air was problematic, and couldn't be controlled with any finesse, no matter how she tried. It was the domain of others, Ty Lee as an example. Fuel came from her. But heat, now there was where the real innovation lay.

As Azula motioned, she was drawing in the very heat from the magma, gathering it into the channels she had learned to create. When the heat became unbearable, starting to singe and sting her from the inside, she cast out a hand, two fingers leading. Heat, focused and pure, shot away from those fingers, slamming into the far side of the steep-sided crater, instantly rendering the stone into lava, before boring through and into the air beyond. And as it did, the sea of magma, or at least a respectable portion of it, grew dim and quiet. Grew hard. Grew black. Grew cold. Azula released that flow of heat, and smirked at the roughly coin-sized aperture she had opened in the superstructure of the volcano. She took a step toward the bridge she had crafted, her natural, unconscious firebending keeping the heat from spontaneously igniting her as she approached.

She hadn't even reached the base when the stone began to brighten again, livening from black upward through the oranges and into the reds, and crumbled in great chunks, reclaimed by the magma sea. She let out an annoyed sigh.

"Well. Next plan," she said. She narrowed her eyes at that platform. How did _they_ get at it? Surely there was some sort of trick. Unfortunately, she lacked the perspective and angle to discern it for herself. She could try flying over, but there was a chance that trying to divide her attention between all of those different things would let one of them slip. Depending on which part of the complex action she failed at, it would either result in a fruitless search, or vastly more likely, her ashes becoming one with the volcano. This one required a bit more... lateral thinking.

Azula took in a deep, hot breath, and spun low, two fingers blasting out a bolt of flame which was almost the familiar electric blue she had lived with. The bolt, bolstered by her deep-seated annoyance of what was going on, seared past the crude plinth and the golden egg upon it, and detonated, sending the thing rolling off and to the edge of the platform the whole structure was perched atop. Her eyes grew wider as it kept rolling... and kept rolling... She almost exhaled audibly from relief when it did stop, a finger's-width from dropping into the liquid rock.

"Um... Azula? He says if you damage the Sun Stone, they're morally obligated to kill us all," Ty Lee helpfully informed from a bit closer to Azula. Of course she could stand closer. For the same reason Azula could; bending kept the heat at bay. Azula smirked at that.

"Then he's going to hate what I do next."

Azula lashed forward with a fist, directing a great pillar of blue fire out and down. Not at the Sun Stone. Below it. Into the molten rock which underlied it. And she held that column of heat and power and violence as it turned liquid rock into gaseous rock, as the pressure began to build. Far be it for her to claim that she was imitating earthbending with firebending, but when she stopped, she only had to wait a moment longer, a smirk on her face, for the mountain to explode, its heart under the platform, and send the Sun Stone hurtling through the air.

But it was not alone. With it, came a flurry of molten rock. She bent again, a tearing motion down and away, stripping the heat out of those airborne chunks and hurling that heat into the walls. Those walls began to glow where the heat had been inelegantly slammed into them. And even then, she still needed to duck and cover her head from the pelting of chunks of rock, some as almost half as big as her fist, which fell around her. Some of them hurt, and she could feel some of the pumice lodge in her hair, but she would worry about that later. Her eyes tracked the Sun Stone as it arched through the air. There was a smirk on Azula's face.

That smirk soured when she saw that the Sun Stone landed well short of the solid rock. It glowed there, surrounded by liquid rock, mocking her. With speed born of desperation, she enacted the stop gap, the last in a long line of plans. With one hand, she flicked back, and a stream of blue fire began to trail back. Another flick, and that whip of azure flame shot forward, snapping behind the Sun Stone. A flick of her wrist dragged the stone back and up, wedging the relic up and finally onto safer terrain. She masked the momentary desperation and shot a smug look back to her prospective allies. Appearing to have not a care in the entire world, Azula sauntered, her hips sashaying with every step, to where the golden egg had landed.

She prepared to move the heat again, since the object _had_ cradled, however briefly, in liquid hot magma. But she couldn't feel heat needing movement. Cautiously, she held her hand over it. The only heat she could feel was the heat radiating around her. Tapping the thing briefly with a licked finger elicited not a sizzle. Her curiosity now truly piqued, she picked up the object with a bare hand. Despite being _bathed_ in heat for Agni only knows how long, the gold in her hands let out only a pleasant warmth. It almost felt like it was... No. That was impossible.

With one of her unmistakable smirks on her face, she turned, the Sun Stone tucked under an arm, and sauntered back to Chanticuhtli, and handed him his relic. "I think this is what you were looking for," she said. "Now, do you have anything else you'd like retrieved? The head of your nemesis, for example? Or maybe your long-lost favorite hat?"

Oméeotl looked aggravated, but Chanticuhtli had a look in his eyes of naked calculation. _"You have done well and showcased your abilities as a firebender,_" he admitted. "_But there are still certain aspects of our culture which must be observed. Come. We will speak more in the town, where, as you will notice, we don't run the risk of being killed by falling, burning debris._"

That was something with which Azula could not argue. She fell in beside Ked, ignoring the extremely excited airbender and the trembling, if mercifully quiet swordswoman. "That was a hell of a risk you took," Ked informed her.

"Such is life," Azula answered. "Besides, it worked, didn't it?"

Ked could only sigh in exasperation, as the grew exited Camaxtli and returned to civilization. As much as that town could be called civilization, anyway.

* * *

"_Now, we shall meet the __real__ you_."

Bi shivered in the small, enclosed room. She had no real reason to shiver. Not only was the weather hot enough that she wagered she could fry an egg on the temple roof, but the room she was in also had heat pumped into it, and steam flowed with it. Ked took one look inside, and shook his head.

"No way in hell," he said simply. Chanticuhtli did not look amused.

"_It is part of the path you agreed to walk,_" the elder said.

"I don't care. The last thing that woman needs to do right now is sweat," Ked said. "I forbid this."

"_Who are you to forbid anything?_" Oméeotl demanded, but the elder held up his hand.

"_If he is so vehement, let this be. But also know that she will be no part of this Tribe._"

Ked shot an aside glance to Smellerbee, who kept her face stony. "If I gotta do it, I gotta do it," she said simply.

"No. No you don't. Just because you can doesn't mean you have to. Besides, _I_ wouldn't want to go into that hellish oven. And you don't need to translate everything," Ked said, turning to Ty Lee. She trailed off in her running translation. "Thank you."

"I said I'd do it," Bi answered.

"And I will not allow it," Ked countered. "If I have to brain you with a log and drag you back to Basu, you're not doing this. Odd as it is to say, that would be doing you_ a lot less_ damage."

Bi let out a snort, her head shaking like a sleep-stunned bull. "Fine. Fine! I'll sit this one out. But if y'all get jumped by sauna-ninjas and you can't beat 'em because you're buck naked and useless, don't come crying to me."

Ty Lee and Ked shared a glance. "You do realize what it is you just said, right?" Ty Lee asked, understandably perplexed. But Bi didn't care; she shot the acrobat a shaky death glare. After a moment of that, the high-spirited woman raised her hands in a motion of defeat and backed away, but still looked like Bi had gone out of her way to kick the woman's puppy. It was a damned good thing that she hadn't been one of the Freedom Fighters, especially at the beginning. It would have broken her soul.

Bi moved unsteadily away from the sauna and found a quiet place in the dark to slump down against a wall. Oh, what she would have given to have a bottle of whiskey right now. A nice, oaky blend from somewhere close to home. Something which burned all the way down, just right. Something to help her kill those parts of herself she didn't want to consider. She sat there, shivering, for a while.

Of course, all good things must come to an end. Her silence and solitude was intruded upon by a perky acrobat, somehow clinging to the sloping awning overhead by her bare toes, staring at her upside down from one floor above. "You don't look so good," the airbender noted.

"Aw, genius. Must be putting that wonderful Fire Nation education to good use," Bi said sarcastically. Ty Lee didn't seem to get it. "I'm aware that I look like I'm half dead, woman."

"No, not that," the airbender said. She let go with her toes, and managed to flip in the short distance to the ground and land at a squat. Her big brown eyes were staring at Bi's own jaundiced peepers. Despite having no proclivity towards it whatsoever, Bi could understand the Tribesman's attraction to her. Ty Lee had the kind of eyes that made one feel like one was slowly, happily drowning in chocolate. "It's your aura. It's all tied up in knots. It's grey and blue and frayed."

"I don't believe in auras," Bi muttered. There were very few things she believed in anymore. Once, she believed in the cause. Ridding the East Continent of the Fire Nation invaders. What a spectacular farce that turned out to be. She once believed in Jet. It ended with his demise. What did she believe in now?

"Why don't you like me?" Ty Lee asked.

"You get on my nerves."

"Uh-huh. Why?"

"Because you're so goddamned perky, all the time," Bi answered.

"And why does that bother you?"

"Because the world doesn't work the way you see it," Bi said darkly. "It isn't fair, it isn't just. Bad things happen to good people, and bad people rise to the top, never to tumble down. The world takes good people and either kills them, or lets them live just long enough to see themselves become evil. It takes people like you, Baihu, and turns them into people like me."

"What's a person like me?"

"Believers," Bi answered. "People with causes. People that still bother to hope."

"And what does that make you?"

"What's with this? Are you trying to get inside my head?" Smellerbee asked loudly and no small bit unpleasantly. Ty Lee looked a bit upset at the outburst.

"I just want to understand why you don't like me."

Bi let out a laugh. That laugh became two, short and dry and bitter, like a shot of gin. Gods, she had booze on the brain today, didn't she? "Because nobody should be as upright and... and happy as you. Why do you get to have the charmed existence, Baihu? What makes you so much better than me? It can't be your peerage; I'm fucking royalty! My blood's as blue as the fucking _water_! So why in the hell do you get everything, while I'm sitting in the mud and dreaming of..." Bi trailed off.

Mostly because Ty Lee began to look profoundly sad.

"I don't know," the girl admitted, sitting next to her. "I never thought of my life that way. That others would be... well... jealous of it."

"I'm not jealous."

"You sound jealous."

"I'M NOT JEALOUS!" Bi roared, and regretted it, because when she did, she could feel her gorget rising up, and she pitched sideways, desperately trying to keep her breakfast in her stomach where it belonged. She'd revisited enough meals this week, flying on the fuzzy thing. Through monumental willpower, she managed to cram that meal back into her stomach and lock it there. At least, for the moment.

When Bi levered herself back up, Ty Lee was moving closer. Bi extended one warning finger. "Don't. Touch. Me."

"I'm sorry," she said, shrinking back, that whipped puppy look on her face again. It made Bi feel like an ass for putting it on the girl's face, and that made Smellerbee angry, because she was not going to have her emotions manipulated, even if the airbender wasn't aware she was doing it. "So that explains the blue. A bit. What about the grey?"

"The grey what?"

"Your aura," she tried to explain, gesticulating, but coming up with nothing.

"I already told you that auras are fei hua and that's the end of it," Bi said.

"Why are you in pain?"

"Because it hurts to walk. It hurts to talk. I itch constantly, and I can scratch myself bloody and it doesn't help. I taste death in my mouth every hour of the day. Hell, I can't even piss right anymore."

"But besides that? I mean, yeah, that's not nice and it'll make you sad, but why is your aura so grey? What hurt you so much?" Ty Lee asked, obviously trying not to pry. But it was prying. It was digging at wounds that Smellerbee could never get to heal.

"If you don't go away, I'm going to smack you. I don't care if I have to chase you around for the rest of the day, it's gonna happen. And trust me, you won't like it when I do," Bi said, letting the percolating, stymied rage flow through her words. Finally, the airbender took the hint, and stood.

"You should smile more," the girl said sadly. "I bet you have a nice smile."

"Then you'd owe me money," Bi muttered. The airbender walked away, and the locals had the good sense to stay the hell away. For just an instant, her mind drifted, to the questioning look a nine year old boy had given her. Her eighth birthday. Asking her if she was a soldier, or if she was a child.

Which was she?

* * *

Azula's day took a turn for the odd. Ordinarily, when one said the phrase 'getting hot and sweaty with a pair of naked Tribesmen', there was a very specific meaning attached to it. One which read scandal and depravity and debauchery, the kind of thing which would have sent the more vapid and gossipy of her noble ilk a-titter amongst themselves. They would laugh at the scandal. They would pity the breach of decorum. They would secretly wish that it had been they involved. Of course, that was a certain connotation which didn't involve being locked in a room with steam pounding at her skin. Sokka had kicked his feet up, and was asleep, or possibly meditating, but she had more faith in the former. Ked, on the other hand, looked extremely drowsy, but fought valiantly to keep himself sensate.

Both were nude of course, but Tribesmen tended to shed clothes at the drop of a hat. Azula frowned for a moment, considering the absurdity of the phrase. Dropping a hat is exactly what happens when one disrobes. They did tend to 'get nekkid', as Bi so inelegantly put it, with little to no provocation, and with no care about who was around them. Ked had explained that it was a matter of culture. Nudity was at worst ignored and at best accepted. Not that Azula was having any problem with it right now. Between her own paramour and Ty Lee's off-limits but notwithstanding quite gorgeous spouse, Azula had a feast for the eyes.

"I should get my character tested more often," she said with a smirk.

"Hrm," Ked muttered. She could tell he wanted to sleep. Whatever the Sun Warriors were trying to do, obviously wasn't working. She reveled in the heat. It was cleansing her bare skin like nothing else. It felt good to be clean; for the first time in her life, that indescribable, but inescapable sulliedness was gone. Another waft of steam fell, obscuring her extremely pleasant view, but reducing her to a level of boneless stupidity which she couldn't say was unpleasant.

"They're going to betray you. You must realize that," her own voice came out of the steam. Azula sat up, glancing around the room. It was not large. Even with the obscuring, and firebending-diffracting mist heavy in the air, she could still see well enough. And despite her memory and her rationality telling her that there were exactly two others in the chamber with her, she could see two others. And one of them looked exactly like her.

"So, my personal demon returns," Azula said, a smirk on her face. She didn't bother moving. Her double would track her wherever she went, anyway. She tried to see the other, but the fog was just too thick. "So what imagined danger to my life do you come bearing this time?"

"You don't really believe you're safe, do you?" that double asked, looming over Azula's seated form. It was strange to look in the mirror and see one's own bleak past. "They're going to leave you, and then you'll be all alone."

"Pardon me as I yawn," Azula did exactly that. There was a moment of silence which she let stretch between her and her double. "Oh, I'm sorry, did I interrupt you repeating yourself for at least the sixth time? Or have you come with some new information or horrors that require my attention."

"Monster."

"Woman."

"Failure."

"Adapting," Azula countered. She looked up under her brows at the double, who was growing redder and more angry with every deflection. "And growing stronger."

"Nobody can ever love you."

"You've found yourself somewhat out of the loop, haven't you?" Azula asked, that smirk plain on her face. "I do have somebody who loves me. A few, even."

"They're lying."

"Why would they?"

"They want to use you," she pointed out, harshly. "That's the only thing that people do to each other. Manipulation. Fear is the only currency which you can use which has worth. Otherwise, they will never obey you."

Azula sighed. "And to think, I used to be this much of an idiot," she said. And as she sat there, she began to understand exactly what this thing was. "I am not the person I used to be. Perhaps I never was. Admittedly, who I turned out to be is... not perfect. I trust far more seldom than I ought, and those I trust, I trust deeply enough that if they wished to, they could do me serious harm. I over-intellectualize, I enjoy toying with people's minds far too much. But a monster? Oh, you give me far too much credit."

"Your friends all abandoned you."

"Because I was a raving psychotic," Azula pointed out easily. Agni's blood, it was like fighting a battle of the wits against a drunken five year old.

"Your own mother abandoned you without a word."

"Patently untrue," Azula said. Her smirk dropped away. A mask, not expressionless, but showing just a hint of what must have been great displeasure, seemed to drop into place. "There was a time where I thought I was you. That you were the part of my mind which I hear when I think. But the more I ponder, the more obvious it becomes that there is no way that's the case. Because you don't know things that I do. You don't know the things that, if you were I, you should. You don't remember Mother. You don't remember the promises that I made," she tilted her head to the side. "But I wager you do remember Ozai."

Her double shivered at the mention of his name. Azula smiled. It was not a pleasant smile. "And there, at last, we reveal your true nature," she said. The disheveled doppelganger took a step back, dropping into a more combative pose. "Oh, please. You're not even real. You're a figment of my imagination, one which I didn't even concoct."

"I'm real enough to hurt you," that double warned. Azula shrugged. She didn't know if it was the steam or the utter certainty she felt which made her so blasé.

"Please. You're what Ozai tried to make me into. Unthinking, unwavering, uncaring, untrusting, and hollow. You are the worst aspects of myself, brought to the forefront, given voice, and told that they mattered. You are my utter lack of self esteem, my alienation, my attachment to an abusive fool," Azula leaned forward, ignoring the almost scalding hot stone under her palms. "You are my father's voice. And you have nothing to say that I wish to hear. Is that clear?"

"You'll regret this," the double said.

"Less with every passing minute," she said idly. The form stepped back into the fog, and vanished from her sight. That doctor might be right. She really did need those spectacles. But there was still that other.

"Who are you talking to?" Ked asked drowsily.

"What? Can I not talk to myself?"

Ked just grunted, and his eyes drifted shut again. She turned to the other.

"You've come a long way," Ursa's voice said.

"You're not my mother," Azula said. "You never were."

That form nodded, and rose from its seat. When it came toward her... it was Azula. An Azula that never had a chance to be. She looked like Azula did now, but unscarred, unmarked by hardship and horror. "I knew that you'd listen to me eventually. That you'd listen to yourself."

"Because you are me. Does that make you my conscience?"

That Azula smiled. Not smirked, smiled. "Something like that."

"So what's going on here?"

"Oh, you're being drugged," she said idly. "Just a hallucinogen, and not a strong one. Nothing to worry about, really. They want you to babble on and see if you intend to betray them."

"What would be the point in that?" Azula asked.

"They're paranoid. Paranoia is a dangerous poison. Azulon learned that well, to everybody's dismay. And so did we."

"So how do I pass this little test of theirs?"

"You already have," she said with a warm smile. And then, she was gone.

The door was opening, and Azula felt nothing but wonderfully exfoliated. Oméeotl glared in. Azula easily pulled the towel she had been seated upon over her body and tucked it into an impromptu robe. "Anything else you want me to do today? Cook you an omelet? Juggle some geese?"

Oméeotl just waved her out of the room; however unimpressed he was, he also looked somewhat defeated. Azula reached down and gave Ked a bit of a shove. He snapped awake, getting to his feet. Oméeotl's eyes widened and he turned away, yammering something with what was obviously embarrassment. Azula's smirk grew. "Come on, Ked. I think we've passed his little test."

"Really? What happened?"

"Nothing. Exactly what needed to," she said. And with that smirk still plain on her face, she sauntered out of the sauna. This was almost too easy.

* * *

To say that their reception had been frosty would have been an understatement. Everybody stared at Ty Lee and her friends like they were going to flip out and try to murder them all without so much as a warning. But that didn't bother the airbender as much as people thought it ought have. Well, as much as Sokka thought it should. She loved that man, but he could be cynical some times. Alright, all the time.

Needless to say, by the end of their second day in Camaxtlican, the people had warmed up to Ty Lee in particular quite a bit. Somewhere between her ability and willingness to speak to them in their own language, and her natural sunny disposition, she really struck a cord with the Sun Warriors. But the more she talked to them, the less warrior-y they seemed. She was beginning to wonder if that was even an appropriate name for them. Yeah, some of them were buff and burly and could firebend a circle around anybody Ty Lee had gone to classes with a decade ago, but just as in the Fire Nation, there were others, no small number of them, who just did all the normal things people did. Knitting. Baking. Chocolate making. Oh, she made a lot of friends in the cocoa house.

"_You know, you're a lucky girl managing to get a big, strong man like him,_" Xipe said, her tone pleasant as she deftly weaved a basket without even looking at it. She was obviously indicating Sokka, who, lacking anything better to do, was digging around in his ear with a finger. He sniffed something he dug out, and made a disgusted face. "_There's something to be said for good, Tribal stock._"

"_I didn't marry him to _breed_ with him._"

"_Oh really?_" Xipe gave a salacious look. "_Ornamental reasons, then? Not smart enough to keep up in conversation, is he?_"

Ty Lee couldn't help but laugh. "_You know, it's not nice talking about somebody behind their back, and its even worse when you do it right to their face!_"

Xipe rolled her eyes.

"_You never did tell me your surname_," Ty Lee said, handing the woman another strip of reed.

"_Surname?_" Xipe asked. Ty Lee spotted Azula coming toward her, Chanticuhtli and Oméeotl hot on her heels. "_What surname? Tribesmen have never had surnames_."

Ty Lee stood, giving Xipe a shrug that let the weaver know that she had to get back to work as a de facto translator. "Hey-a, Azula!" Ty Lee chirped.

"I think I've jumped through most of these old men's hoops. Could you please tell them to get to the point? There are other stops on my itinerary, and I can't afford to doddle here for the rest of the month," Azula said, impatience plain on her face.

"_Chief Chanticuhtli, Azula wants to know what else you require of her to show her intentions_," Ty Lee relayed, softening it up a bit so they wouldn't be offended. She'd had to do quite a bit of that over the course of their stay.

"_We shouldn't be letting her stay here even this long. It's a fell omen. Catastrophe will come of this!_" Oméeotl said harshly. Chanticuhtli cut him off with a wave of his hand.

"_We have judged her far more harshly than any offspring of our own, and she has not in any __way disappointed. In some ways, she has impressed me. She would be a valued member of this Fire Tribe, if for her mastery of the Blue Flame alone_," he answered. He then turned to Ty Lee. "_Tell her that she has completed what tests we assign to those who would call themselves a Tribesman, and done so adequately_."

"He says that you're pretty much in," Ty Lee relayed. Azula smirked at that.

"Well, I must say that is about time he decided that. We're already low on time as it is," Azula muttered. "What I want to know is why Ked was under as much scrutiny as I was. I don't like having my partner in jeopardy."

Ty Lee turned back to Chanticuhtli. "_Azula wants to know why you were mean to Ked._"

"_The falling-out between ourselves and our sister Tribe is well known. Consider him fortunate that he wasn't born in the days of our inception. His very presence would have incited many to open warfare._"

"It's 'cause he's a Tribesman," Ty Lee answered, not thinking for an instant that anything else he said might be relevant. Azula did not look pleased with that answer.

"You have something against waterbenders?" Azula asked. Ty Lee relayed it.

"_Were it not for their kind, the energybenders would never have been sundered and our peoples would never have split. Our tribe torn in half, because of the hubris of the heretic, Nanuuica. It is an old wound, distant cousin, but one which our Tribe still remembers._" Oméeotl didn't look happy that Chanticuhtli was saying even that much.

"Pretty much," Ty Lee answered. Azula scoffed.

"Well, keep your opinions to yourself and keep your knives in their sheathes. Or there will be trouble, trouble the likes of which I doubt you can deal with," Azula pointed out.

"_She doesn't want you to hurt Ked. Or Sokka,_" she amended.

Chanticuhtli stared at her for a moment with those old, golden eyes. "_I see no reason why we would. Not by my hand, at any event. There is only one more thing which must be done before you can __stand amongst us as Sun Warriors of the Fire Tribe."_

"_And what's that?_" Ty Lee asked.

"_Marriage into the Tribe_," Oméeotl answered. She stared at him. Oh, this wasn't good. She just found somebody that she loved, somebody who made her happy! That wasn't fair to have to lose it like that! Ty Lee's mind whirled for a moment, trying to come up with a solution; like a curtain drawing back, one appeared to her, right there where she could reach it without even having to strain herself. It wasn't even really a lie. Not if you looked at it the right way. Which was sort of sideways.

"_She can't_," Ty Lee said. "_She's already married. To Ked. That's why she's so protective of him._"

"_Impossible. No Fire Tribesman would __ever__ marry a Water Tribesman,_" Oméeotl countered.

"_The High Chief of the South Water Tribe married a Firebender years ago. It's not that weird. Really!_" this, not even slightly a lie. And it must have showed, because Chanticuhtli sighed and shook his head.

"_If that is how it is, I won't be a monster and divide them. I am not a cruel man. Despite what __some__ think of me,_" the High Chief gave Oméeotl a bit of a glare at that. "_She has married into a Tribe. Perhaps not ours, but the wording allows for a certain... flexibility_."

"_I must protest! This... this...!_" Oméeotl sputtered, trying to find the words to voice his outrage. Chanticuhtli silenced him again with a sharp grunt.

"_Your protest is noted. Since we cannot be sure of the veracity or legality of the ceremony which joined them the first time, we will wed them once more, under Agni and before his chosen people_," Chanticuhtli said, a broad smile stretching across his face. "_We will celebrate at sunset._"

"_It won't be ready by then_," Oméeotl said petulantly.

"_I've already had things in motion. Everything is prepared._"

"You're in!" Ty Lee said, giving Azula a quick hug. She decided to keep the whole wedding part to herself. She didn't need Azula to spook and run off. It was bad enough for Ty Lee's wedding, and she _really_ wanted Sokka for a husband. She failed to grasp the literary appropriateness of getting cold feet for a wedding at the South Pole.

"So, that's it?" Azula asked.

"Yup!" Ty Lee said. "Oh, there's one ceremony left, so you and Ked will have to get all tidied up."

"Ked?"

"It's a Tribesman thing," Ty Lee dismissed. Azula rolled her eyes, and retreated back into the shack which they'd been given access to. "Wow. I'm better at lying than I thought."

"_She's not really married to the boy, is she?_" Xipe asked idly. Ty Lee's smile dropped off, and she nodded morosely. "_And she doesn't know that this is a wedding, does she?_"

"_No, she doesn't._"

"_She's going to find out, you know_," Xipe piped up, not bothering to look up from her weaving.

"_Oh, shush. Everything will be fine_," Ty Lee said. It was a strong part of her philosophy, that credo.

So much so that the hours until sundown passed in a whirl, as the people turned the central courtyard, stretching between two squat, layered pyramids into something like a festival ground in a duration of time so short it almost seemed like magic. When Azula came back out, she blinked, stunned that such a transformation occurred so quickly.

"What is this?" she asked.

"The ceremony," Ty Lee answered. Half-answered, really. But little white lies never hurt anybody. "Where's Ked? He needs to be here, too."

"Am I going to need to say anything?" Azula asked.

"I'll let you know if you do," Ty Lee answered. Sokka sauntered over, spotting the decorations, glancing immediately toward where Azula was collecting Ked, and let out a little chuckle. "What is it?"

"Oh, nothing. For a second there, those looked like wedding decorations."

"They are."

"For who... Azula, right?"

"Don't tell her that. It'll freak her out."

"What poor sod are they lashing her to? I feel I should give him a fair warning," Sokka said with an amused expression.

"Ked."

Sokka frowned. "How does that work?"

"I kinda... lied a bit. To make Azula happy. Without her knowing it."

Sokka grinned at that. "You really are adorable when you're duplicitous," he said, putting a kiss into her hair. She smiled her own, usual, radiant smile and made her way to the head of the crowd, where Azula and Ked were waiting. Ked looked nervous. And he kept glancing behind him to the décor. So he recognized it to, did he? She quickly got between Azula and Ked, cutting the latter off just as he was opening his mouth to give voice to what Sokka had already pointed out. Her sudden appearance silenced him just long enough for Oméeotl to suddenly splash the three of them with a basin's worth of frigidly cold water.

"_This is an auspicious day,_" Chanticuhtli said, holding the Sun Stone before him, grinning at the sputtering and stunned, suddenly soaked fire, air, and waterbender. Unlike yesterday, when Ty Lee saw it last, there was something like a crack on its surface. She gave a nervous glance to Azula, hoping he didn't notice it. "_The Sun Stone has cracked._" Drat. He had. "_Only a bearer of blue fire can give a Matriarch such nourishment. Thus, she stands before you. A Firebender the likes of which has not been seen in this tribe for two thousand years. And she has asked to become one of us._"

"This has to do with that egg, doesn't it?" Azula asked.

"Kinda."

"What is he saying?"

"_Shao was the last Matriarch, all others hunted to extinction. But now, a new mother is due to be born. In the coming Summer Solstice, a second Blue Dragon will come into this world, find her own __nest, and spread the dragons once more across the face of this Earth. Because of her. As High Chief of this Fire Tribe, I recognize her service to our people, and recognize her __as__ our people._"

"Well, that's a hopeful note."

"_She is also a symbol of times to come,_" Chanticuhtli continued. "_For thousands of years, our culture has nursed old wounds, the old injuries which split our people in twain. Once, we were one Tribe, one people. But we tore ourselves apart,_" he sighed. "_Perhaps it was Nanuuica's heresy, or perhaps it was our dogmaticness. Perhaps there was no other way. If others could see beyond that division, then we must as well._"

"Well, that's nice. It's been a while since I've gotten some hero worship," Azula said with a smirk.

"Umm. Is this what I think it is?" Ked asked nervously. Azula gave him a raised eyebrow, but Chanticuhtli cut them both off by continuing.

"_The Tribe of Water and the Tribe of Fire have been at war long enough. It is time for peace. It is time for us to stop living with our backs to the future, staring at the past. It is time for us to retake our place in this advancing world. And these two, Ked, and Azula, are a symbol of where we must go. They have united Fire and Water. They live in harmony. So must we._"

Ty Lee didn't translate that last part, but regardless, Azula got a suspicious look on her face. "Ty Lee."

"Yes?" she answered.

"Is this a wedding?"

"Yes..." she answered.

"To whom?" Ty Lee nodded toward Ked. Azula's other eyebrow rose, joining the first. "Hmm. Could be worse."

"Excuse me? Could be worse?" Ked asked, mildly offended.

"What? I always thought whatever wedding I had would be more... spectacular," Azula said. "Thousands of servants, performers, guests. Fine wines and succulent chocolates. A state wedding," she let out a chuckle at that, as it was obvious that most of that was actually present. "I find I am redefining what counts as 'spectacular'."

"If you're not comfortable with this..." Ked began, but Azula rolled her eyes and turned toward Chanticuhtli again.

"Oh please. It's not like this little event actually means anything, the same as if Sokka had tried to do something this idiotic. It's just a... formality. Besides, as long as Ty Lee doesn't tell them otherwise, they will never know the difference," Azula said, a little smile gracing her face for a moment, just long enough for Ked to notice it.

"_Well said_," Chanticuhtli said, as though she were making a speech. "_Agni has blessed this union with his scarlet rays. The Tribes are united at last, if not in whole, then at least, in the two of you. Go forth and be fruitful._"

Right then, Ty Lee noticed how Azula was holding Ked's hand. It was about then that everybody nearby shrunk away a little, because Ty Lee emitted an ear-breaking squeal of glee.

* * *

Days. Days she had spent in that library, and the more she read, the more it contradicted what Iroh said. Ursa rubbed her eyes, leaning back in her chair. She couldn't understand what to do. The curse had to have a work-around. That was the way curses worked. But there was nothing on 'uniting tribes' or anything so complex in anything she read. It was much simpler, if obscure, things, like hiding one's expression for an entire night, or crossing a wooden bridge four times in one afternoon.

"Anything new, mistress?" Reuven asked.

"No," she muttered. "I've scoured everything. The only choices I have left are to either find the lost Library of Wan Shi Tong, or..." she threw up her hands in dismay.

"You always told me that there was always one more option than first appeared," Reuven pointed out, biting into an apple. "What are you taking for granted? What might give room to slip?"

Ursa glared at him for a moment. She wasn't taking anything for granted. She'd spent too much of her life striving for this moment to give it anything less than her utmost care. The whole reason she even became Empress, supplanting every legitimate claimant to the post and rising herself from Empress Consort to Empress proper was that so when the time came, she would be in a position of power. So when she was capable of helping, oh, what help she would bring. In fact, the only thing she took on faith was...

"Oh, Agni's blood; I'm a moron," Ursa said, mentally kicking herself.

"Hmm?" Reuven asked. He was lucky she allowed such behavior from him.

"There's only one thing I took on faith, and that was what Iroh told me," she said. She stood, moving toward the door, her lackey falling in one step behind her, and the other rising to join them as soon as she exited the door. "The first bit was just good advice. If I came back to the Fire Nation while Ozai was still in power, he'd have me killed. But the rest was utter fabrication. And I believed it, because I never thought in ten thousand years that he would lie to me."

"Lie about what, mistress?" Reuven asked.

"There was no curse," Ursa said. She glanced back to her underlings. "Book me the first boat to the mainland. I'm going to see my son."

* * *

_Leave a review._


	20. Truth and Fiction :Part 1:

**Oddly, most of Hope Arc turned out to be multi-parters, which helped a bit since Hope was the arc which I hadn't exhaustively planned out before setting out to actually make this buggered thing. At least I managed to get as far as I have by now; the finale's second part is done, and now I just need to finish the third and final. That's the end. Finito. Done. This world thereafter is consigned to the 'I've done it' basket. And none too soon, because general real-life badness has conspired to give me a looming case of Creator Breakdown. I just need to hold it off for about a week, and given my previous, decade-long experience with depression, that will be possible, if not particularly easy.**

**The same as there are mix-and-match creatures, and mix-and-match plants, I came up with a mix-and-match country. Azul is Chile with a hefty dose of Australia (because everything's trying to kill you), populated by a mixture of Spaniards, Nepalese, and Japanese. Montoya Azul in particular was a fun one to think up, and I had a number of different ideas of how to portray him, but I eventually decided on one part Niccolo Machiavelli, and two parts the Dos Equiis guy, and a dash of filial dischord for flavor. Once again, he's a character who has a lot more to him than I was able to portray in the story proper. And that's a shame. If I'd been thinking properly, I would have brought him in at Book 3, but since he shows up now, I make do with what I have.**

**God, I'm so tired right now. But I'm almost done. Yay, I guess.**

* * *

The skyline of Azul was not impressive. It didn't soar like Grand Ember. It didn't caress the terrain almost lovingly, as did Grand Fire. It didn't even nestle between the mountains, scenic and idyllic as Cán did. Well, before it was buried after that earthquake almost a century ago. In truth, much of the city of Azul was downright hideous; squat factories clustered greedily around the waterways, sucking the life and the products from them. Smoke billowed from a thousand stacks, the aerial waste of the greatest manufacturing center on the planet. Even Ba Sing Se, which was so much larger in both size and population that Azul could have vanished into the least of its Rings, couldn't keep up with the sheer industrial capacity of Azul. It was dirty, it was cramped, it smelled disgusting, and it made it very easy for Azula to conceal herself.

"The big question is why are there still people here," Azula asked. Bi, her face hidden behind a death's-head helmet, gave a glance. "The social doctrine of Azul is to fight until the last man woman or child on home soil. There's a reason they haven't lost a pace of land in thousands of years. So why are there Azuli still living here?"

"I think I'm gonna be sick," Bi muttered from inside stolen armor, ignoring Azula's question. Azula hadn't asked how the woman got a new set of electric blue, skull helmeted raiment, and truth told, she didn't want to ask. She was fairly sure she knew the answer.

"Well, that's what you get for drinking this early in the morning," Azula pointed out.

"I haven't had a chance to drink in days," Bi complained morosely. Truth be told, she wasn't looking so good. Every time Azula saw her, she looked worse and worse. Even now, the way she walked made her look like she was dying of plague or something, inside that concealing armor. Azula even had to steady her some times.

"I need you to keep your eyes open. Montoya didn't just vanish into thin air, and the Ibuki mountain range was far too vast to search manually. There must be some clue as to his whereabouts. He wouldn't just let is spy network go to seed," Azula pointed out. One thing that Azuli cherished more than anything else was information, and what pathways lead to it. It was part of the reason why Zuko and Mai, together, actually made a decent Fire Lord. He was good with money, and she was good with information. Azul would probably have left somebody behind to tend to things, or at the least, relay them.

"So you keep saying," Bi muttered. Azula would have chastised the woman for being careless, but it was obvious that however she suffered, she was paying very close attention, because from time to time, Bi would guide them away from a looming threat; the Dai Li agents which now walked the streets, easily recognizable by their stance and stone foot and handwear, since they had doffed their green robes. Odd, how an intelligence agency would think so little would render its agents invisible. But then again, for all Long Feng was good at directing the large picture to his ends, he tended to defer micromanagement to his underlings. Prudent, but it left him open. Azula just needed to find a way to turn that against him. It wasn't easy.

"Find anything?" Sokka asked, seeming to appear out of nowhere with his straw cloak and broad pan hat. He, more than any of the rest of them, could look and sound the part of an Azuli. Well, a lower class Azuli, anyway. Azula managed not to start at his sudden appearance, and shook her head with an annoyed expression.

"Not yet. Hand it to the Azuli, they're very good at keeping their information networks discrete," Smellerbee said with a sarcastic tone. "I think I need to sit down for a bit."

"We'll have time for that later," Azula said. Bi muttered something under her breath that didn't sound to be in any language but the language of annoyance. Sokka was about to say something, but looked past Azula. She turned, seeing Sokka staring off the wall, glaring over an out-thrust finger. Well, it sort-of looked like Sokka, albeit a Sokka of about forty years of age, with grey hair and a bushier grey beard. Come to think of it, he looked how Sokka did when they broke the siege. Then she read what it said. "...what is this I don't even..."

Sokka let out a laugh at it. "Wang Fire Demands you do your Duty to the Fire Lord," he read aloud. "I can't believe they actually print these! That's hilarious!"

"That's not it. I hear there's a play, too," Bi pointed out. Azula could almost hear the smirk on the alcoholic's face.

"Oh, I've got to see that," Sokka said brightly.

"Focus!" Azula snapped. Both turned to her. When she spoke again, it was much more quietly, letting the voice vanish into the industrial din of the city. "We came here to locate and, if necessary, liberate the Coordinator of Azul. Not to watch some terrible stage-act. Clear?"

"There's no call in being a buzz-kill," Sokka said plainly. He held up one finger. "As I was about to say, though: I think we're going about this the wrong way. We're assuming that their network is a physical thing; in my experience, smart people dealing in information tend to make themselves hard to locate, but keep the flow of information easy. How?"

"Anonymous networks. Dead drops. Carrier birds," Azula rattled off a few options that she would use in that situation.

"Exactly. And the problem with those?"

"Too much maintenance and far too vulnerable to infiltration. Requiring somebody to actually go into harms way. Following the animal leads to the spy," Azula answered each, respectively. And then, it dawned on her what he was getting at. "Unless you were to use a mixture of all three. Anonymous dead drops via carrier hawks and pigeons, relayed anonymously through the network until it reached the spy. Inefficient, but practically untraceable. Oh, that's clever thinking."

"It's what I'd do," Sokka said with a shrug. "It requires a level of coordination I don't see very often, but then again, we're looking for somebody called the Coordinator, so I wouldn't put it past him. For all we know, anybody, or everybody, here in Azul could be part of the network."

"So how do we get access to this... network?" Bi asked. Sokka smirked, and cleared his throat.

"It's simple," he said in a plain, clear tone, easily loud enough to fill the alleyway. "We make it known that the real Azula is trying to find Montoya Azul, and she's in his city."

"Are you insane?" Bi hissed, clapping a gauntlet over the Tribesman's mouth.

"Insane like a fox. Now they know to look for us." Azula smirked. She appraised the Tribesman once more. "Were you unwed, and I unattached, I believe we would have made a _spectacular_ couple."

"Thank... you?" Sokka said.

The look of bafflement on his face brought a smirk to her lips, as she turned and headed away from the factories and the grime, and into the cleaner parts of the City of Azul, where the wind blew the smoke away and let the iron-sided buildings mount dully against the rolling hills through which the river slipped. Only one job left. Find Montoya Azul. After the more difficult ones, like bringing the Sun Warriors into the War of Flames, this would be a cake-walk.

Right?

* * *

**Chapter 20: Truth and Fiction (Part 1)**

* * *

Mai was not the sort to stomp. Her path through life had always been walked softly, silently. Her upbringing had made sure of that. While most Azuli nobility were unforgivably loud, she had been made to be quiet. Silent. Invisible. For that reason, she did not stomp, but quietly glided through the palace with all of the menace and foreboding of an approaching thunderstorm. She only had two actual responsibilities as Fire Lady, outside of those which she had assumed by dint of political brute force. One of them was to protect the royal heirs, the other, to manage the affairs of the household. Right now, both were in something of a tizzy.

A young man with amber eyes swung the door open, clearing her just before she reached it. Inside was what looked somewhat ridiculous to a casual observer. It was a middle aged woman, wearing very well made if unassuming clothing, surrounded by so many spears that she could shave her head with a sneeze. The woman didn't look amused, but neither terrified. She just stood, a living necklace of blades hovering around her, and waited. Her bright gold eyes took in Mai, and she nodded very slightly. Mai wasn't quite sure what to make of that.

"I see you're showing your usual tact," Mai said with a fair degree of snark. The man she'd chosen to lead this garrison, a local named Touji, gave an apologetic shrug, but kept his eye on the woman in the center of the room. Much as she disliked when Touji overreacted, it was far safer to have him overreact than the alternative. "So. What is the meaning of this?"

"We found her snooping around the residential wing," Touji said. "We didn't show her the inside of a cell because she asked for you, instead of the Fire Lord."

"Me?" Mai asked. A fine eyebrow rose at that, and she faced the woman. "That is irregular. Most are after Zuko, hoping to secure a place in his bed as a concubine, and a side door to power and wealth," she looked the older woman up and down, and a scowl came to her pale face. "Of course, those sorts of women tend to be... younger."

"Have you been ejecting many women from Zuko's bed at night?" the woman asked, a small smile on her face.

"Only those he doesn't eject first. What is your name, interloper?"

"I'm surprised you don't remember me," the woman said.

"I would be, too. I have an excellent memory."

"Of course, it has been more than a decade since I saw you last. You were so angry at Azula for that little prank she pulled," the woman chuckled at that. Mai's eyes drew down.

"I asked you a question. As your Fire Lady, I demand you answer it."

"You really don't recognize me?"

"If you dodge the question one more time, I'll send you to Ashfall this instant," Mai said, raising a hand.

"I am Ursa."

"Another one?" Touji asked, with a sigh. Before being assigned to the head of the local garrison, he had been one of her private guards. This was not a new phenomenon.

"Another what?" the so-called Ursa asked, a bit baffled.

"You wouldn't be the first woman to come in here, claiming to be Ursa. That's just cold. Exploiting a man's desire to see his mother again. And for what? Money?"

The woman chortled. "Believe me, I have all the wealth, power, and influence I need. This has nothing to do with leeching the authority and holdings of the Fire Nation."

"Others have said as much, too. And every one of them crumbled when their story was held up to the light," Mai said. "Take her away."

"Belay that," she snapped, and all of the guards froze, glancing at Mai, then back to her. The way she spoke, it was with such authority and deadly calm that it drove a moment of doubt into Mai. "Leash your hounds and let us talk like civilized people. It's the least you could do, isn't it?"

Mai gave a glance to Touji, who shrugged. She nodded out of the room. He answered her nod with one of his own, and slipped away. She made a dismissing gesture, and the ring of steel around her broke and the bulk of the soldiers filed out of the room. But no few remained, their backs to the walls, their eyes locked on the invader. "I must say, I rather like what you've done with the Palace. For once, it looks like a place where people would _want_ to live."

"You're going to offer me proof of your identity," Mai said. "And bear in mind, that this isn't the first time an Ursa has come around."

"It must have been painful when he learned the truth about those imposters."

"He didn't. I didn't let him know about them. They weren't his problem," Mai said. Shielding Zuko from his own emotional nature was one part of being his wife. The other part was giving him an outlet for that same nature which wouldn't distract him. There _was_ a reason why in six years of marriage they already had three children. As an outlet, it wasn't half bad.

"Very good. I knew you would be a good match for him."

"You still haven't convinced me that you are who you say you are."

'Ursa' smirked. It was an expression frighteningly similar to the one which Azula would show. "I could try to rattle off facts which supposedly only I would know, but we both know fully well that a skilled imposter would simply dig a bit deeper and find out those little details to make the performance more believable. So saying that I first met you at your mother's birthday when you were four wouldn't mean anything. That is public knowledge."

Mai nodded. Much as she didn't like to admit it, the woman was speaking truth. Truth that seemed to be damning her own position, but that was starting to fill Mai with unease. "So what doesn't the public know about?"

"Well, I recommended to Iroh to send your father as far away from the Fire Nation as he possibly could, since he was, forgive my saying, absolutely useless."

Mai smirked at that. "In that we agree," she sat down in a nearby chair, and 'Ursa' did similarly. "Here's something that isn't public knowledge: Why did you start your affair with then-Prince Iroh?"

"I don't doubt you've read the correspondence," she said, crossing her legs. "On paper, the reasons I stated were loneliness and marital neglect."

"On paper?"

"The truth was, it was Ozai's plan to put his brother in a compromised position. He resented that Iroh was going to inherit the Burning Throne despite what we agreed were unforgivable failures of character, so I seduced him. Since his wife had died a few years before, it was laughably easy."

Mai leaned forward in her seat. "That doesn't sound like something Ursa would do."

The woman sighed. "When Ozai and I met, I saw him as a vehicle for upward mobility. I was quite correct in that. He saw in me an intellectual and conspiratorial equal. Somebody who would be just as invested in his own meteoric rise as he was. I will be the first to admit that I never loved that man. But Ozai and I did see eye to eye on many things. In the beginning, at least."

"You're very quickly defeating the case that you are actually Ursa," Mai pointed out.

"Zuko has a... skewed... view of me as a mother," Ursa said with a shrug. "To him, I could do no wrong. He revered me. And I let him."

"You claim you were manipulating your own son?"

"No. Never," Ursa said vehemently, and with a touch of outrage. "I was _once_ Ozai's partner. But something changed."

"What?"

"Zuko," Ursa said quietly. "And Azula. At first, I saw being pregnant as just another step toward Ozai's ascendency, to my own rise. I could claim, due to the 'affair', that it was Iroh's child, and supplant him. But when he was born, and I actually held him in my arms... I was confused. I didn't know what to make of what I felt. So I arranged to have another child. Your friend Azula, no less. The things they showed me... I wasn't the same person after she was born as I was when I was pregnant with Zuko. I realized that all those things I was obsessed with... just didn't matter. They loved me. Zuko and Azula _actually_ loved me," Mai opened her mouth, and Ursa cut her off with rolled eyes and a nod which spoke 'mea culpa'. "Yes, I'm aware how much she resented me by the end. When Ozai realized he'd lost his partner, he decided to manufacture a new one in my daughter, and Jeong Jeong was an effective, almost surreally willing tool to that end."

"You tell a very different story from the others," Mai said.

"Of course. The greatest difference between truth and fiction is that fiction needs to make sense," Ursa pointed out.

"Here's a question for you. Where did you go? When Ozai banished you from the Fire Nation, where did you go?"

"A brief trip around the world, sulking and wasting time and effort," Ursa admitted with a shrug. "But then I realized that I had to be in a position to help my family. So I set about becoming the Empress of Great Whales."

"Now _that's_ absurd."

Ursa smirked sarcastically. "_Beth wnaeth fi ddweund am y gwirionedd a ffulgen,_ Mai?" she asked in perfectly fluent Whalesh. "_Yr wyf yn briod I men I deulu o Ymerawdwr Zeruel ac yna gwared ohonynt fy hun I fod yma._"

"I don't speak Whalesh."

"I don't blame you. It's a bizarre language. I still sometimes forget that they write left to right," she shrugged. She then settled back in her seat. "So. What's your opinion of me?"

"Your story is bizarre. The others were plausible. Some downright believable, until I found that one thread and it all fell apart on them. But this? This is almost cosmically absurd."

"I wouldn't give it to you as truth unless it was, since that is the case. So. What is your word?"

"It will wait for a moment," Mai said. And exactly a moment it was, because Touji returned with one of the serving staff in tow. It was the squat, bald headed cook, the one who had served the reign of four Fire Lords. Well, three, considering Azula was fire Lord for less than a week, and she banished him from the city before even that long. Touji gave Mai a nod.

"What is this?" Ursa asked.

"Oto. Do you recognize this woman?" Mai asked.

"From where?" Oto asked.

"From years ago. She was living here from about two decades ago..."

"Lady Ursa?" Oto asked. His eyes darted to the floor. "Forgive my rude manner. I thought you were dead."

Mai froze, mid word and mid motion.

"I assume you kept your part of the bargain?" Ursa asked.

"Well, I kept sending the information off. But sending it to _you_? I never considered it possible."

"You were a spy?" Mai asked.

"Until recently, yes," Oto said. "About two years ago, my... contact... told me my services were no longer required."

Mai felt a bit of a sting at that. She thought she'd cleaned the house completely. She must have overlooked Oto because she thought anybody who got the dirty end of the stick from Azula would be above suspicion. "I see. We will speak of this later."

"As you wish, Fire Lady," Oto said, bowing, and then scurrying away. Mai turned to Ursa, who was now smirking in the same smug, infuriating manner in which her daughter did. Any doubt as to the woman's identity vanished. There was _no way_ that this woman was not the ascendant of Azula.

"Well. This is... unexpected," Mai said. She waved again, and the remaining soldiers began to file out of the room. "I was getting used to the fact that we were both effectively orphans."

"Not so. Your parents immigrated to Torus a few years ago," Ursa pointed out.

"Yes, I had heard, from your daughter. I still stand by my original statement."

"Falling out, I presume?"

"Rocks fell, everybody died."

"I see," Ursa said. "I suppose you want to know why I stayed away for six years after I, by all rights, should have showed myself?"

"Consolidating power, I should assume."

Ursa snorted, rolling her eyes. "Please. I had the reins firmly in hand eight years ago. Superstition. For reasons I'd rather not get into, I believed that if I tried to contact my son, it would mean his death. Since I'm here and he's not dead, that is obviously incorrect."

"You haven't met him yet."

"He doesn't yet realize that I've met him," Ursa corrected. "I am a careful woman. Obviously that has influenced what Zuko sought in a wife, since I sense you are much the same. I have learned much about my grandchildren, but knowing is not the same as experiencing," Ursa sat forward, and there was a hunger in her eyes. It was the kind of desperate need that Mai sometimes saw in Zuko, when he was obviously thinking of his mother. Back then, when they still had time to be distracted. "Would it be possible to... arrange a..."

"In time," Mai said. "In case you haven't noticed, it's their naptime. If you know anything about my younger daughter, you'd know that was the _only_ reason why there was quiet in the halls. You can meet them in the evening at dinner time. Besides: that's when Zuko will be up. He functions in the night far better than I do."

A small, warm smile came to the older woman's face. Once again, it struck Mai how similar Ursa was to her daughter. The only real difference was that Azula's smile was still unsteady. "I'd like that. I really would."

* * *

He was a very patient man, Han Hua. He had served his entire life under the Grand Secretariat, towards another man's ends as another man's means. Patience was one of his great virtues. He had outlasted the fall to the West. He had outwaited the hollow peace, six years of scurrying around in the shadows for a master not his own. To his credit, nobody suspected his duplicity. He was very good at what he did. So when his underling finished his report, Han's one green eye opened, staring across the street in the darkness.

"How long until Azul makes his move?" Han asked. The underling shook his head in ignorance. No matter. "Then we shall wait until he does. Keep everybody back."

"Yes, Secretariat," the agent said, silently slipping into the darkness of the city. Despite what most believed of Han Hua, he had ambitions. Those ambitions were, one and all, held very close to the chest, though. His ambitions were easily met, requiring nothing more than an unimpeachable sense of timing. He reached into his coarse, uncomfortable clothing and extracted the exquisitely manufactured spy-glass he kept within. Nothing he had was showy. Everything he had was as functional as it could be. So when he scanned the hotel, it was with a clarity such that he could have probably counted the cavities in the peoples' teeth.

"We have movement in the hotel," a second agent, a lantern-jawed agent born in the Middle Ring, pointed out. Han swung his lens down to the alley which ran along side the hotel. Azula, you foolish child. Did you really think that nobody would be watching Azul? Did you think nobody would notice you? He saw that movement... and he scowled. It was nobody. Just a filthy woman with stringy hair wandering out into the streets, down toward the docks.

"It's nothing," Han said. "Keep your eyes on the hotel. If we miss Azul here, the Grand Secretariat will have your heads."

"As you say, sir," the agent uttered, then turned his attention away from the woman and back to the building. Ambition, closely held. Not even Long Feng, the Grand Secretariat himself knew of Han Hua's ambition. It was in the Secretariat's best interests to keep things that way. So close. He could almost taste the end. All he had to do was wait. Wait, and then strike. With a bit of luck, he could even undo the damage which Long Feng's laissez-faire management had caused in the East. A smirk came to his face. In truth, he wouldn't need luck. Fools needed luck. Incompetents needed luck. Long Feng needed luck.

"I think I've got something," the agent whispered. Han Hua rose his lens once more, looking not at the street, but up at the rooftops. At first, Han saw nothing. But then, movement. Just a whisper of shadow against the surrounding dark. A flicker of movement. The dry, small smirk returned to Han Hua's face. That was them. He watched as they bounded across the gap, rolling to a stop on the roof of the hotel.

"Excellent," Han Hua said. "I always wanted to match wits with the Azuli. Life seems to be offering me my every desire, of late."

"We have eyes on the Azuli," the agent said. That Han Hua couldn't see who was being referred to was only testimony to their effectiveness.

"Good. Keep them in the darkness. We're after their master, not they themselves."

Han Hua tucked the lens back into his cloak and turned from the hotel. Azula thought she was clever. Long Feng believed he was cleverer still. Han Hua had faith, though, that he would be remembered in a hundred years as the cleverest of them all. All he had to do was quietly wait. It was the story of his life.

* * *

It was a testament to Azula's new, arguably improved frame of mind that she endured this treatment for its duration. An earlier Azula would have had harsh words and harsher actions for this sort of unkindness. But as it was, she had enough experience 'being kidnapped' to know that there was a time for fighting – say, if you were _actually_ being kidnapped – and a time to not, such as when the kidnapping was all a part of a facade.

Still, Azula was scowling when the bag was torn from over her head. The greatest kindness they had done was provide a bag which was clean. When the Dai Li did it, the person snatched before her must have been the filthiest individual from the Lower Rings, judging by the stink left behind. Azula blinked vigorously, trying to get her wounded eyes to adjust to the sudden light. There was still a gag in her mouth, but it was only a ball of wood held by silk. Truth told, it wasn't that unpleasant. But it was still in her way, so she breathed out a stream of fire, reducing it into soot and ashes. She smacked her lips, leaned over, and spat the ash onto the floor. "Was that strictly necessary?" Azula asked.

"That would depend," a voice said from outside the pool of light. Since she knew who it was from that accent, that tone, she didn't strain to recognize it; instead she took a moment to scan around the room.

"Who else is here?"

"What the hell happened?" Ked asked, obviously distressed. That drew a scowl to Azula's face.

"You'd better not have harmed him. You don't want to know what I'll do if you harmed him."

"He put up a hell of a fight. Did you not warn him that these sorts of things would happen?" the voice asked. Azula tracked it by ear, even if she couldn't by eye.

"Did. You. Harm. Him?"

"No, I'm alright," Ked said. There was a laugh. "I didn't know you cared."

"Since you're still capable of sarcasm, I'll take you at your word," Azula said, noting the relief she felt, but not lingering on it. There were other things she needed to do. Things which required her not to be lashed to a chair. She took in a breath, and carefully rearranged the flows of chi through her body, forming a lattice which arched out of her skin and around her clothes. Then, she ignited it, replicating the form she'd thoughtlessly invented during her brutalization in Betla. The flame seared, and the ropes holding her fell away, sliced by fire. "You made yourself remarkably hard to find."

"Indeed I do," he answered. The voice was circling them in their pool of glare. "But then again, I had something to worry about. I wasn't sure what to make of your sudden reappearance, three months ago. Some unpleasant suspicions of mine were confirmed when Ozai vanished from Ashfall. Some of us sacrificed much to make sure he stayed there."

"He needed to be taught a lesson that he couldn't learn behind bars," Azula said. She forced a lancet of fire from her fingers, and cut Ked loose. She leaned closer to him. "Where are the others?"

"Sokka got taken somewhere else. Ty Lee's in the air," Ked whispered back. "Why the rough treatment? Don't you realize we're trying to help you?"

The pacing sounds stopped, and a laugh, hearty and rich, echoed in the room. "Help? From Ozai's daughter? Forgive my suspicion, young man, but perhaps you do not know this lady as well as you think you do."

"An Adamite would say that he knows me 'biblicly', whatever that means. I dare say, he has a much better grasp of my motives than you do, Montoya," Azula said, dropping the last strands of rope in her hands. "Where are my glasses?"

They came flying out of the darkness. Azula caught them and slid them into place, peeling back the glare and letting her see beyond. Purple and red were audacious colors at the best of times, but the way Montoya Azul wore them, it made them seem like somebody's least formal pajamas, more a broken-in bathrobe than a cloak of office. But then again, there was much about Azul which was utterly disarming. His hair, mostly gray but still full and lush. His brushy, equally gray beard. The easy half-grin which he almost always had on his face. Even the eyes, a softer grey than any other member of his hopelessly large family. Somehow, every trait which made the Azul family intimidating, imposing, or so unimaginably _other_, all softened in him. It made him seem approachable. It made him seem honest. It made him seem harmless. He could easily disarm almost anybody he met with his looks alone.

But, failing that, Montoya Azul was also equally capable of disarming you with his hands.

"Tell me, Princess Azula... Or is it Fire Lord, now? I can never keep these things straight in my mind. Tell me, what exactly did you think to achieve by coming here as you did, without your little friends the Dai Li close at hand?" Montoya asked, for all the world as reasonable as a beloved grandfather asking for somebody to fetch him his cane.

"Just Azula, now. Zuko is the Fire Lord. And I came looking for you. To help you."

That gaze hardened just a little, as a wisp of disbelief wafted through before the guise slammed back into place and he was just a kindly man, slowly moving toward his elder years.

"I almost believed that."

"I have been told that I'm a very good liar," Azula admitted. Ked, obviously out of his depth, remained silent as she began to track him as his circular pacing resumed. "Of late, I find that this trait is working against me. Or rather, the perception that lying is all I'm capable of. You must know that as well as anybody, Montoya. Isn't that what Maya tells herself all the time? Daddy always lies?"

"Leave my daughter out of this," he said, not slipping one iota.

"You didn't do right by that woman, and you know it," Azula said. "But it's not my place to judge your family, as it is not yours to judge mine. I don't particularly care what you believe of me, so long as you're capable of heeding me."

"And why would I?" Montoya asked.

"I lie for the same reason anybody lies. To suit my ends. And for that same reason, I tell the truth. When it serves my ends. And right now, my ends are to deliver you into safety in the palace of the Fire Lord."

"So you intend to imprison me?"

Azula let out a growl. "My reputation is certainly biting me in the... how did that go?"

"Biting you in the blubber," Ked supplied the idiom. Azula nodded, and turned to the patriarch of the Azul family.

"See, now he's what confuses me. What's his part to play in this?" Montoya asked.

"He is my physician. Also, depending on whether that little celebration was legitimate or not, he _might_ be my husband. I'm going to have to get somebody to check on that," Azula said. Her lower lip pouted out a bit as she pondered. The pacing stopped, and Azul gave as close to an incredulous look as the man would ever give.

"I'm sorry. Your what?"

"That is not the issue here, Azul. You are the issue."

"I am perfectly safe. My Gurkhas are more than capable of protecting me."

Azula rolled her eyes. "Please. We both know that however inflated the 'legend' of the Azuli Gurkha is, the truth is much more mundane. They are extremely good soldiers. They do their job with exceptional efficacy and reliability. They are not superhuman."

"That's not the story I like to hear told," Montoya said. "Why are you here, Azula?"

"Zuzu wanted you safe. He's sentimental like that," Azula answered.

"Forgive my skepticism, but why should I believe that you would ever willingly work for your brother? Especially after what you did to his companion?"

Azula gave a glance to Ked, who shrugged his ignorance. "The last few months have been something of a transformative experience for me," Azula said. Montoya chuckled at that.

"Again, forgive..."

"You can keep asking the question, and you'll get the same answer from it," Azula said. "Because it's the truth."

"It really is," Ked offered.

"Tell your pet Tribesman to be silent," Montoya said, off handedly.

That made Azula's brows draw down. Fire began to drip from her hands, a fierce electric blue. "Call him a pet once more, and we'll see who becomes silent."

Montoya paused, rubbing his beard with his fingers. His hands were, oddly enough for an Azuli noble, darkened by the sun. "So you do care for him. That is highly unusual. And very much out of character for you."

"You know little of my character."

"We know that you have a doppelganger in Grand Ember."

"Ah yes, her," Azula said. "What do you know of Long Feng?"

"He is a hard man to get close to. I've lost more trusted agents of mine than I care to count in that task, and for no gain," Montoya said with a shrug.

"He is the former Grand Secretariat of Ba Sing Se. He is still bitter of a little game we played a few years ago. He had me... replaced... by somebody more biddable and controllable when I showed I wasn't willing to dance to his tune."

"You never were one to be put on a string," Montoya agreed. "That little game. It wouldn't have something do do with our brief rulership of the Great City, would it?"

Azula only smirked.

"I see," Montoya stopped near the door. "So what is his part to play in this?"

"If I were him, and believe me, I'm far smarter, I'd be using the puppet rulers to put myself in a position where I effectively rule the world. Well, the warm parts of it, at least."

"What's wrong with the South Pole?" Ked asked.

"Do I really have to begin?" Azula asked, but gave him a bit of a smile to soften it a bit.

"An outsider? Trying to conquer the Fire Nation and rule from the shadows?" Montoya summarized. In truth, it was more complex, but there were aspects which she didn't feel like informing him about.

"That's what I'd do. He's already got one puppet; mine. I don't doubt he has far more sway in the East," Azula said idly, inspecting her fingernails. Montoya stared for a moment, then let out a long exhale.

"The Azula I know would never admit to being manipulated, even in the slightest. There is a ring of truth to this. We _should not_ have been beaten on our own soil. Not by the Embiar alone."

Azula was about to continue to press her point, but the door behind Montoya banged open, and Sokka practically fell in, draping a long arm over Azul's shoulders. A mostly empty bottle of Azuli potato liquor hung from his fingers. "MONTY! There you are! We were just talking about you!"

Montoya kept his calm remarkably well, considering. "What are you doing here?" Azul asked. "I was told you were being debriefed."

"Well, we were about to get down to that 'interrogation' you promised me a couple of years back, but I got the idea to break out the shoka, and one thing lead to another. Before I know it, everybody's drunk, so I surround them and escape in the confusion," Sokka said.

"You're not drunk, are you?" Azula asked.

Sokka straightened up and tossed the bottle into the air. Azul caught it. "Not even a bit," he admitted. A goofy grin grew onto his face. "You'll never believe how I _actually_ did it."

"It can wait. You should probably retrieve Bi," Azula pointed out. "I don't doubt she's in a foul mood by now."

Sokka looked a bit struck at that. He shook his head. "Bi's not here."

"What do you mean?" Azula asked."

"Bi... Smellerbee is gone," Sokka answered, a note of sadness in his eyes.

* * *

_Earlier_

"I don't like this. I mean, what happens if something goes wrong?" Ty Lee asked. Sokka sighed, but shook his head.

"Look, I shouldn't even be telling you this, but I'm not letting you be involved in this. Just... Promise me you'll stay somewhere safe, alright?" Sokka asked. Ty Lee pouted, doing her best to worm her way around his defenses. And he had to admit, she was very good at it. But right now, he had a task which was more important even than his wife's happiness; prolonging her life. "Alright?" he stressed again.

"Alright," Ty Lee said. She squeezed him, hard, before parting and heading out to the balcony which overlooked the anemic courtyard. With a sad glance back, she snapped open her glider and floated up and away on the winds. He hated doing that, sending her away, but his options were limited. He just took the best one he had access to.

In total, only half the group knew the plan. That kept it a degree safer than it would have been otherwise. From Ty Lee, because she tended to say things she shouldn't when she got on a roll. From Ked because... well, Sokka just didn't figure he needed to know. Since Azula was doubtless as prepared as she was going to get, Sokka wandered back into the building, away from the windows and high-ceilinged hallways, down into the belly of the hotel. It hadn't been surprising for Sokka that Bi would ask for some place quieter. She had been complaining constantly of headaches since they left Camaxtlican.

The room she'd picked for herself was a door away from the boiler-room, but it was admittedly a hell of a door. Even with the thing chugging away, there was only a dull hum which made it through the wall. Sokka rapped on her own, less impressive door and waited for a moment. He leaned on the threshold for a moment, letting his mind wander. He couldn't wait until he got a couple of days in Grand Fire. There was something he really wanted a chance to build. The prototype he'd assembled in Kad Deid could itself reinvent a portion of science for a thousand years. Imagine what he would be capable of with proper equipment. Much as the Whalesh tried to do their best, Sokka just preferred his own laboratory, his own tools.

The door opened with a groan of stuck wood. Peering up with hooded eyes, Bi looked about as lively as a week-buried corpse. "What?" she demanded froggily.

Sokka's intended conversation fell of its rails, caught fire, and exploded. He just stood there for a moment, agape, staring at this woman whom he had met so many years ago. "What the hell has happened to you?" Sokka asked, shaking his head as the words came to his lips utterly unbidden.

"Gonna have to be more specific?" Bi asked, her voice wet and phlegmatic. She coughed and sputtered for a moment, before disgorging something brown and viscous into a basin on the floor. It obviously wasn't the first time that she'd done so. He stepped into the room and almost stepped right back out again. The room smelled... horrifying. Like an entire cart of rotting cabbage. That she didn't notice lead Sokka to one of two conclusions. Either she couldn't smell, or she was the source. Sokka could guess which it was.

"I thought Ked fixed your little liver problem?"

"Put a bandage on it. A real fix would kill me," she said hollowly.

"I'm going to ask you a very serious question, and I want you to think before you answer me. Do you understand?" Sokka asked, catching the woman by the shoulders and talking her square in the face, however much her breath did reek. Bi nodded darkly. "Are you up for this? Are you going to be a liability?"

"Yes and no."

"You didn't think. I told you to think," Sokka said. Her brows drew down and she slapped his hands away. She stormed over to the cot, and sat on the edge of it. "What happened to you? I don't remember you ever being like this."

"Life happened, Baihu," Bi said. "And unlike somebody I can mention, it didn't turn out all sunshine, oceans of cash, and gorgeous flexible airbenders. Life is harsh and cruel and unforgiving and unfair. Good things happen to..."

"Bad people and good people get left to die in the gutter, am I right?" Sokka finished for her. He shrugged. "Well, I'm right there with ya'. I'd be the first to say that we don't live in a just world. I'd be the first one to question 'destiny' or providence or... luck," he said with a shudder. "But that doesn't mean I have a right to be an asshole. Yeah, the world's unfair. So what? Treat it like it is. Force it to be fair. If the world sucks, change it."

"I can't change the world," Bi said.

"Says the uncrowned queen," Sokka responded. He pointed a thumb at himself. "I'm a peasant from a backwater village on the glaciers of the South Pole. I had no formal education until I was seventeen. I have none of the exceptional powers of the Avatar, or even my little sister," he said, omitting that he could, after a fashion, waterbend. "But I'm not just going to piss and moan that life is unfair because I didn't get front loaded with opportunity. I made my own. So what's so rough about your life that you can't do it yourself?"

"You just don't understand," she said.

"Make me."

"How old were you when you first killed a guy?" Bi asked after a bit of a pause.

"Seventeen. It was the day Ba Sing Se fell. Some Dai Li agent," he shrugged.

"I was seven."

"Seven?"

"Yup. I was surprised how much work it took. How I had to dig around in there with my knife to make him stop choking me," Bi sat back, running fingers along the relatively clean lines of her stolen armor. "Seven years old. You ever kill a child?"

"No," Sokka said.

"Lucky you. There's a reason I'm the way I am. It ain't pleasant."

"Is it Azula-unpleasant?"

Bi snorted. "Please. Like anybody would want to wet their willy with me," she said. A smile pulled at her face for just an instant. "Well, there was..." the smile fell away.

"I don't think your head is in the game."

"I think calling it a game is an insult," Bi countered. Sokka rose an eyebrow.

"You're distracted, and that makes you a danger to the plan," Sokka said. "You might want to sit this one out."

Bi just stared, her fingers against the hard, lacquered leather of her breastpiece. To his relief, she actually seemed to be thinking about it. Her dark eyes stared at nothing, and she became utterly still. The only movement was the rise and fall of her breath. She blinked, very slowly, her fingers pressing a little harder, and then, her eyes slid closed.

"Well, good that you..." Sokka began, but was somewhat surprised when she began to furiously undo her armor, like it was burning her inside. When she managed to slough it, she pulled the entire harness she used to secure her hookswords in place over her head and dropped it on the floor to a clattering of metal on stone. Sokka didn't like the look in her eyes. "Bi, what are you doing?"

"Get out of my way," Bi said. Sokka still blocked her.

"Bi, I'm a bit concerned about where your head is. Just calm down and tell me wh–"

Sokka was cut off by a remarkably hard punch across the jaw which left him seeing stars. When he shook them away, Bi was frozen in place, her fist still clenched, her eyes wide. Wide and damp. Like she was crying and she didn't even realize it.

"Alright, what was that f..."

This time, she grabbed him by the collar and drove a knee into his stomach, driving the wind out of his lungs and doubling him over. She then moved past him, hauling him by his shirt, and swung him into one of the lockers which, despite its unsanitary status, still smelled better than she did. He flattened against the inside wall of it, and winced when he heard the door slam shut, pinning up against his back, trapping him in near perfect darkness.

"I'm... sorry," Smellerbee said. And then, Sokka was greeted to the sound of her footsteps walking toward the side door of the building, whereupon she vanished into Azul. Sokka let his head bang against the back wall of a locker.

"Well. This is familiar," he muttered. "Reminds me of how I met her."

He would remain in there until Azul's agents retrieved him.

* * *

To say that Zuko felt like hell would be downselling it. Nocturnalism was so against his nature that it kicked him in the side of the head with increasing frequency for every night that he was awake. But given the choice between a slightly inconvenienced Zuko and a borderline useless Mai was hardly a choice at all, it was a sacrifice he was happy to make. Well, less happy, more 'inherently willing'. With a groan, he rolled out of bed, blinking away the odd dream he had about traumatized children fighting sins against god. He was really going to have to stop eating before he nodded off. It was starting to affect his mind.

With a second groan, as he rose and stretched his mildly aching back, he wondered what new problems today would bring. It was a thought he hated waking to, but a lifetime of digging through the mud for the slightest glimmer of joy and hope had left him a somewhat jaded young man. Jaded and aching. What justice was there when he at the tender age of twenty five was already almost as stiff as Iroh?

The one thing which kept him buoyant was that, despite everything going on, his children were alright. Despite the schedule that both parents adhered to, there was always somebody looking after them. He quickly pulled on his winter clothes, which were far thinner than most around here favored. Zuko had once swam in the icy waters of the North Pole during the deep winter. The people from the Fire Nation had no conception of what cold really was. He smacked his lips, wandering out of his cavernous room and into his sitting room. He gave a nod to Mai, who was waiting in one of the chairs.

"Mai," he said idly. He felt something collide with his legs, and smirked as he ruffled Kimi's hair. "Girls."

"Zuko," Mai said. Zuko nodded to her, and gave a half-minded nod to the woman next to her.

"Mom," he said with less than half a mind, walking to a basin full of ice and water, pouring himself a crisp drink. He actually got it half way down before his eyes shot open very wide and he almost choked on it. His shoulders hunched, as he slowly turned.

"Zuko," the woman said. Zuko just stared. He couldn't believe it. It was hard enough for him to wrap his mind around Azula, the Azula that she had become. This seemed to be straining very hard to simply shatter his brain and leave him drooling on the floor. Of course, he never would, because he had too much do do today. He still had to meet with Yehlu about trying to reclaim Burnt Peak.

Why was he thinking about war right now?

"I'm still asleep, aren't I?" Zuko concluded. One dream led into another. Simple as that. He sighed. "Well damn. This was going to be a good one."

"You're not asleep," the woman said calmly.

"Yeah. I'm going to start flying in a moment."

"Zuko, stop," Mai said tersely. Zuko blinked a few moments.

"You're bein' silly, daddy," Kimi said.

Come to think of it, Yuuki looked unusually perky, sitting on the woman's lap. Perky in that one could actually see her grey-and-gold eyes, instead of having them perpetually directed to the floor. He glanced over to his son, who was just looking around the room like something terribly interesting was happening in a vacant corner. He looked back to the woman.

"...How...?" Zuko managed to get out.

"She arrived at noon. I didn't want to wake you."

"YOU DIDN'T WANT TO WAKE ME?" Zuko shouted. Kimi took a step away from him. "You didn't think that this might be worth my attention? My mother comes in from the cold and you keep her away from me!"

"Daddy, stop shouting," Kimi said, a serious scowl on her face, her eyes wide and concerned. Zuko pressed his eyes shut for a long moment, took a calming breath, and gave his little girl a nod. He looked at the woman again. Oh, damn it all. He'd gone and scared Yuuki.

"Alright. I'm calm."

"You don't look calm," Mai said.

"I'm calm," Zuko repeated. He looked to the woman again. How? That was the word which kept repeating over and over in his mind. He shook his head, still trying to understand. Had it been thirteen years? Fourteen? It all seemed so surreal. And to hear her voice again... "Where did you go? Why didn't you come back?"

"If I came back, Ozai would have killed me," she said. There was a trembling of her lips as she leaned down and whispered to Yuuki. His elder daughter looked up, gave a little smile, then hopped off her lap. She rose, and took a step toward Zuko, who was frozen in place, not just by his younger daughter wrapped around his legs, but by the whole situation. "I just want you to know, every moment I was away was torture. I wanted nothing more than to come home."

"I... I can't believe it," Zuko said, his eyes wide. "Mom..." he shook his head. "But what about after the War? Why did you stay away for _six years_?"

She shook her head, her expression flashing for just a moment into something which took him aback. Not because he didn't recognize it, but because he did. It was Azula's wry smirk. "I trusted somebody I shouldn't have," Ursa said. "But that doesn't matter. I'm home now."

In a lot of ways, Zuko considered himself an adult. He was a husband, and a father, and a ruler. One seldom became all three without some patent of adulthood. But in this moment, all of that seemed to fall away. The last time he saw her, it felt like a dream. Now, it finally felt like he'd awakened from it. His eyes tightened, tears pushing out of them, as he closed the distance and hugged his mother, felt her arms pulling him close.

"I couldn't remember your voice," Zuko said quietly, shakily. "I'm so sorry, Mom. I couldn't remember your voice."

"It's alright, Zuko," Ursa said. "Everything's going to be alright. I'll make sure of it."

Zuko didn't ponder what she meant by that. He didn't care. He had his Mom back.

* * *

"So what exactly do you mean, she's on your side?" Azul asked, swishing a glass of liquor in his hand. It galled Azula that while Montoya treated her like a mad hound, Sokka got instant respect and trust. Despite obvious implications of the two of them butting heads before.

Sokka rolled a cigar along his fingers, unlit. "She's working with her brother to stop the war," Sokka said. They had retired from the interrogation room to the only other room in the cabin, this a living room with a rough wooden table. Much about this situation struck Azula as quite odd. But she didn't have time to dwell on it, since she the plan she had devised was coming along nicely and she wasn't going to doddle and let it all fall apart. One of the most important faculties which she had lost because of the wall was her ability to improvise. Now that she had it back, she was using it to its fullest.

"And why would you trust her? If I recall correctly, you were one of her staunchest enemies during the last war," Montoya pointed out.

"Yeah, that was the _last_ war," Sokka countered over his unlit cigar. He kept rolling it over his knuckles. "I always wondered why Aang... The Avatar... was in such a tizzy about her. Turns out, she's a big softie once you get to know her."

"Does he _want_ a broken nose?" Azula asked darkly.

"Sokka tends to..." Ked couldn't come up with a kind way of saying it, so he went with the unkind way, "be an ass."

"A _smart_ass, thank you very much," Sokka accepted the compliment with a grin.

"I'm beginning to think she has you brainwashed."

"Nah. I just looked into that abyss and saw what made her blink. Trust me, if you'd been through the same shit she was, you'd be barking mad, not staring at you like she's Azula stop starting at him like you want to set him on fire," Sokka had to change tracks suddenly as he actually took in the look on her face.

"What? I do. It would relieve a lot of the annoyance I'm feeling right now," Azula said.

"You're not helping your case," Sokka pointed out.

"Quite the contrary. In your mind, Montoya, you're gauging me, to see if I am truly the Azula who called you a 'smug, sanctimonious jackass' the last time you visited Sozin City, when it was still _called_ Sozin City. He's also making sure that I don't have you ensorcelled or brainwashed somehow. Since you're being your... eloquent self, that's proving increasingly unlikely. Montoya," that Sokka called him 'Monty' still drew an inwardly chuckle in Azula, "you are going to have to take it on faith that in this, at least, my ends are directed parallel to your own, and thus will not conflict with them. I have personal grievance with everybody directing the Blue Flame. I will have restitution for what they've done to me."

Montoya let out a long sigh, and sipped of his drink. After smacking his lips, he looked up again. Odd as it was, he was a man for whom vibrancy was a natural gift. But there were days when he showed his age. Today was apparently one such day. "I believe Sokka's mind intact. I believe yours is intact. But your motivations? I cannot say. The only thing which I have any faith in is that you want revenge. But what you're willing to spend to get it... I cannot say."

"Then go to Grand Fire and hide in my brother's palace for all I care," Azula said. "But I am not leaving you here in the mountains to be crushed at Jeong Jeong and Long Feng's leisure."

A whisper of silk announced the presence of another in the room. She slid through the darkness with a guile which surpassed Mai by a heady margin, which was saying something. She walked past Montoya, the barest caress of words against the air, and then she was gone, vanished into the shadows from which she came. It was almost like the Azuli assassin had never been. But that was what they were good at. Mai was a very capable woman, but she hadn't a patch on the men and women her mother forced her to emulate. Montoya's face darkened somewhat, and he stood.

"I should have known this would end in treachery. You fooled Baihu. You fooled all of them, I wager," Azul said. "But you cannot fool everybody."

Azula stared at him for a moment, and then sighed. "Let me take a wild stab in the dark. Your agents have just noted the approach of military forces of the Blue Flame, and you're jumping to the conclusion that I led them here. Regardless of the fact that they could just as well have followed your agents abducting me? Long Feng is a mediocre player, but even in mediocrity, one can find uncommon luck."

"Strong words from the woman who stands to gain much by our destruction."

Azula's eyes rolled and she let out a growl. With a cut of her hand that flashed with cyan fire, she shouted. "Enough! I am tired of being persecuted and harangued for the person that I was forced to be. I don't care if I have to drag you all broken and bleeding to my brother, I'm going to do it. And because of your damned over-caution, now I need to cut my way through an army to do it."

"Cut your way through an army?" Sokka asked. A grin grew on his face. "I'd love to see that."

"Then pull up a chair," Azula said, shooting a venomous glare at the Coordinator. "Let's see how sane you seem doubting me when I save your life."

* * *

_Leave a review._


	21. Breakthrough :Part 2:

**Running low on new chapters, but that's alright, because I'm finished writing it. Yup, it's official. Two more weeks, and then this story is consigned to memory and history. All told, CotW ended up being three quarters of a million words, all hammered out in less than a year. God damn, that's been a hell of a run.**

**There's a number of things which I regret about this story. A lot of places I didn't get a chance to explore, which had such potential. I've gotten Great Whales well enough to sate my interests, but I've barely touched Azul, and because of what was needed for the story, fully half of Ty Lee's sisters were dead before we knew anything about them at all. And that's unfortunate. Worse, because of the pace of the last chapters of the story, there are a couple of people I couldn't touch on at the end. But that's enough moping about. You came here to see Azula take on an army, and that's what you're going to get. It ends about how you'd expect.**

**While I learned how to do Mood Whiplash from Supernatural, I learned Juxtaposition from Goodkind. Well, Goodkind before he discovered Ayn Rand and went all preachy, anyway. But there is a sense of ennui that I felt flowing through this work which I had seen nowhere else. The world was ending. I was letting it go, because the stories I wanted to tell were told. It's almost like watching somebody slowly die. Yes, it's inevitable, and you know that it will be good in the end for all concerned, but it still has a sadness to it which cannot be denied or explained.**

**Enough moping. Having a bad month, might as well not drag everybody else down.**

* * *

"Alright, now everybody tilt your head back," she said, her tones bright and singsong. Before her were arrayed a dozen boys and girls, all of them from around Azul and its outlying hills. All of them wanting to get out, and willing to pay for the privilege. Ty Lee Baihu was, after all, regarded by most authorities – which consisted of pretty much exclusively the Avatar himself – the greatest airbender of the modern age. It was said, and quite rightly, that after Avatar Aang taught Ty Lee how to airbend, she then started to teach him. So lessons from Baihu were considered the gold standard in the world.

She opened one brown eye, making sure everybody was doing as she asked. Then, with a happy sigh forced out, she swung her head down. "And then let it dangle, like a soggy bit of asparagus," she directed. A dozen young heads flopped about like they were held on by only a loose spring. In truth it was dishonest what she was doing. It wasn't hurting, but there was no way she could teach them airbending. That required two things. Children who had the knack, and a teacher who knew her stuff. Aan Jee Baihu was fairly sure she had neither.

She forced herself not to sigh, as she pondered that this really wasn't what she expected to be doing in Azul. But then a goddamned civil war came out of nowhere, and she had to make the best of it. And by make the best of it, she meant 'look out for my own damned skin because of what Ty Lee is doing with the Red Flame'. Aan Jee frowned at the blue marks on the backs of her hands. Not tattoos, of course. Any con requiring that level of commitment had to pay off a lot better than this one. This was just getting her enough money to put food on the table, a roof over her head, some shoka in her belly, and maybe a nubile Tribesman in her bed. She found, in the last few months, that she was fairly good at stretching a little money a long way.

"No thanks to you, sis," Aan Jee muttered.

"What was that, Master Ty Lee?" one of her 'pupils' asked.

"What? Did I say something?" Aan Jee forced her voice to be flighty and insipid again. Well, that wasn't really fair. It wasn't that Ty Lee was dumb... which she was... it's just that she got held against much smarter people for comparison, and it was hard to shine intellectually when she was being compared against a scholastic genius like Zhu Di, or a streetwise slicker like Aan Jee.

"When do we start airbending?" a girl of about six asked.

"When you have a... clarity of thought," she lectured. Well, lecturing wasn't the word, because Ty Lee would never lecture. She would just hug people until they learned things. Somehow. "You can't float on the breeze if you're all, like, tethered to the ground and stuff."

"Oh. That makes sense," the girl nodded, as though it was the most logical thing in the universe. Aan Jee had just made it up off the top of her head. She didn't know the philosophy of airbending. Not even close. She was no bender of any kind herself, not like Tsu Zi was shaping up to be. She couldn't comprehend how seven sisters, of which six were almost perfectly identical, could only produce two benders, and one of them not even a firebender! But then, Tsu Zi had to go and get herself all dead. And so had Rai Lee; she never got that boat she always wanted. So had Kah Ri; all of those little stories she wanted to write, burnt up with the rest of her. So had Gwen. Although, the way Gwen moped around, one would almost think she'd welcome it. It didn't help that Mom had to saddle her with such a weird name. It was like it was Whalesh or something.

Aan Jee didn't let any of this show on her face, though. She mourned her sisters in the best way she knew how: by bringing down the man who ordered their deaths. There was a catharsis in knowing Ozai had fallen, and everything he worked to accomplish crashed and burned around him. That his every plan came to naught, all because she was good at forgery. Well, there were a lot of things that Aan Jee was good at, very few of them legal. Aan Jee was about to give another instruction which, while pointless, wouldn't necessarily be harmful, when she felt a gust of wind behind her, and a loud bellow that sounded like the ground itself was shouting at her. Aan Jee's dark eyes shot wide, and she turned, just in time to have her face intercepted by a tongue larger than she was. It threw her onto her back, covered in bison drool.

"Is that you?" her own voice shouted down at her. Aan Jee flicked the goop off of her eyes and beheld... herself. It was like looking at a mirror, if there existed a mirror which would make you appear sitting astride the brow of a fifteen tonne flying bison. Well, to her benefit, she wasn't sitting up there long. Aan Jee had scarcely gotten back to her feet when she found herself being swept into a bearhug the likes of which only Ty Lee was capable, spinning around on a cushion of airbending until she was frankly more than a little dizzy. When it stopped, Ty Lee started with the questions.

"Oh my gods! I was so worried that you were hurt or dead or something! Are those tattoos? Are you an airbender now? What happened to what's-his-name? You know that cute guy? What ever became of him? What's with all of these children? Hey I can't even see that scar anymore! Didn't you get that in a bottle fight? Or am I thinking of somebody else?"

"Ty Lee," Aan Jee said. All of her 'pupils' were staring in abject bafflement, which Aan Jee was scarcely better at hiding. "What are you talking about? Don't you recognize your own students?"

Ty Lee's questioning look vanished into a grin when she finally got what Aan Jee was doing. Sweet girl, her younger sister, but not bright. Not so great at improvising. If there was one lesson Aan Jee had learned over the years, it was how to roll with it. It was why she still had her hands.

Well, rolling with it, and a certain blind metalbender, but don't let history know about that.

* * *

**Chapter 21: Breakthrough (Part 2)**

* * *

Azula poured over the map which had been hastily thrown over the table by the man with the off-kilter hat. Some, who didn't know a real fighter from a hole in the ground, would have called it a sloppy adornment of uniform. In truth, the angled, wide brimmed hat was one of the most recognized symbols in Fire Nation warfare, and one of the most feared. "So what do we have to work with?" Azula demanded.

Iñagoh Azul, Montoya's grandchild and already a Gurkha of some repute, began to rattle off figures. "We've got roughly five hundred Gurkha at the ready. Another thousand in auxiliaries and archers, including almost a hundred from Yu Yan. That isn't counting the bodyguards of the Azul and Loyo Lah families."

"What is is Amada doing here?" Azula asked. "She's supposed to be on the edge of Hui."

"Grandfather took them in when a scion of her family became Fire Lady," Iñagoh said distractedly. He shrugged. "She was quite thrilled at the sudden improvement in her station."

"Regardless, it just means I have two families to deliver instead of one," Azula said. She frowned for a moment. "What about assassins?"

"What do you mean?"

"You're Azuli. As in, the family of Azul. You can't honestly tell me that you don't have any trained assassins on hand."

"I try to keep out of that business," Iñagoh said uncomfortably.

"Twenty," his grandfather answered gently.

"Twenty," Azula repeated. She tried to kneed her brow, but her spectacles got in the way, so she had to remove them to complete the gesture of aggravation. "I suppose it was too much to ask for to have a commando unit at my disposal," she muttered. She looked up to the old man in the red and purple robes. "We can't throw them away, but we can't be timid with them. Use them as audaciously as you dare. Blind their army."

Montoya smirked at that. "Well put."

"The real problem is that the terrain works against everybody," Azula said. "And considering the size of the army bearing down on us..."

"How large of an army?" Iñagoh asked.

"The entire occupation force for the city of Azul," Azula answered. She gave the young man, only of age with Ked, a sideways glance. "Does that weaken your resolve, child, knowing you face fifteen to one numbers?"

Iñagoh actually looked mildly insulted at that. "The Gurkha dies; it does not break. With a thousand or alone, I will fight."

"And here I thought that little spiel was simple bravado," Azula said with a smirk of her own. She caught Montoya nodding out of the corner of her eye. She pointed at the map, at a spot that was not close, by any means, to where they were. "They have ten thousand men and more bearing down on us. That works for us, if we can use it properly. They will be broken up by the terrain in Ibuki. And they can't use the paths we will."

"I wouldn't be sure of that," Sokka interjected. "The reason Azul fell so quickly was because their defenses were literally undercut. That means earthbenders, possibly Dai Li," he pointed at another spot. "They're probably flanking us toward this path even as we speak. They have the same maps we do, and they will be sealing the paths they know we will use."

"You are a threat to morale, Sokka," Azula said flatly. But then, the Tribesman began to grin.

"Good. I'll be a threat to theirs. What are the Azuli known for?"

"Killing people quietly, crushing anybody that tries to invade their homeland, possessing the most advanced manufacturing facilities on the planet, and potatoes," Azula rattled off.

"Exactly. They do things a certain way. Don't you, Monty?"

Montoya grumbled something under his breath.

"Which we can use to our advantage by being unexpected," Sokka pushed the broad map over further, letting it unroll and pinning down its hitherto ignored section with an empty liquor bottle. "They'll expect us to make for the passes, which they will have sapped, blocked, or trapped. They likely have a Dai Li heading this, and Dai Li attack from all directions. I know. I've had to fight them before. So they're flaring out to surround us," he made gestures around their position. "Now, if a commander was going to hammer-and-anvil a force, one has to make sure there is complete enclosure. That means lots of disciplined and capable soldiers sweeping ahead of us to where we're getting boxed in."

Azula's eyes went wide. A dark grin came to her face as she grasped intimately what he was explaining. With one fingertip, she drew a direct line from where they were, directly into the city of Azul. "Brilliant," she said.

Iñagoh gave a glance to his ancestor, who raised an eyebrow, demanding clarity without having to say a word.

"We cannot make for the passes," Azula announced. "By the time we reach them, we will already be surrounded, and we will be crushed into dust before we can get anybody across them. So we need to be audacious. We will cut through their lines at their most fragile point, at the critical moment."

"What are you saying? That we retake Azul?"

"With this force? Please, we would be slaughtered the moment their force returned," she rolled her eyes. "I am saying that we storm Azul, commandeer the ships in the port, and sail to Grand Fire."

"There's an entire army between here and Azul," Montoya pointed out.

"There won't be for long," she answered. "Because three quarters of it is going to be flaring out to surround us. We only need to cut through a fraction of their force. We cut the ones that matter, and we run, and we don't stop until we have iron hulls under our feet and ocean at every horizon. How does that strike you as a plan?"

"Insane and suicidal," Montoya said, but not harshly.

"And it might just work," his grandson finished. He looked up. "I'll tell the men. By the way they're covering ground, they'll be split in a half-hour. We make our move then, or never."

Azula nodded, and said, "Jai Maho Agni, Ayo Gurkhali," Iñagoh smiled at that.

Ked looked a bit confused at that last utterance, as the young soldier departed from the cabin. Azula turned to him with a shrug. "It is their warcry," she explained. "Blood for Immortal Agni, the Gurkhas have come."

"They don't do anything half-assed, do they?"

"No, we do not," Montoya answered. He rose, and gave Azula one last look, before turning toward the door himself. But as he walked, he spoke again. "I hope you realize that if we do not survive this, neither will you."

"I don't like being threatened," Azula said.

"How was that a threat?" Montoya asked, opening the door.

"By implication, the way you do it best," Azula said. "I will lead from the front. That is where I belong. Your khukris shall go thirsty of my blood today."

"Is that wise?" Sokka asked.

"No. But in this case, it is our only option," Azula admitted.

What Montoya thought of that, he did not say, vanishing into the world outside. Azula turned back to the map, which now had only they three surrounding it. "So, what odds do you have of us actually surviving this?" Azula asked idly.

"_I'd_ bet on us," Sokka said genuinely. "Come on, we've got the most terrifying woman on the planet, and the smartest man on the planet, on the same side. What could beat us?"

Ked groaned. "You _do_ enjoy tempting fate, don't you?" he asked.

* * *

The heavy iron of the vault squeaked unsettlingly as Chan slowly opened its massive bulkhead. Their plan depended on quite a bit of luck; first and foremost, there was one thing that they needed to know beyond all shadow of a doubt. So Chan found himself down here, in the dead of night, breaking into the guts of Yuchiban Palace between the frequent patrols of those stone-faced killers. There were a lot of things that he'd rather be doing, but Yui would get this look in her eyes, her lip would pout out just a little, and he'd melt. It was a good thing the real Azula never learned how to pull an expression like that. She could rule the world on pure adorableness.

The first thing to hit him as the stink. Of course, from what he'd seen, he had the good sense to hold his breath, taking it in slowly so it wouldn't leave him gagging. He'd smelled filth before. It was like this child hadn't the first concept of human sanitation. Chan ignited a flare over his hand, deliberately avoiding the lamp near the entrance. It would be just like Long Feng – so he'd heard – that he'd check the oil levels every time he left or returned. The light revealed what Chan expected to find. The crust of dried urine pooled in a slight low spot on the floor. The filth and foetor was otherwise confined to one corner, upon which rested its source. The instant the light hit the child, it let out a thin whine, pulling in on itself and hugging its rags closer.

"Do you understand what I'm saying?" Chan asked. Then, he caught himself and sighed. Of course he didn't. He was an earthbender, that meant he must speak Tianxia. He muttered to himself, trying to call up the lesson's which had mostly vanished into the ether years ago. "_What are you_?" he managed, but even then, he grumbled, since that wasn't what he meant to ask. Damn his elementary-school understanding of foreign languages.

The child pulled in on itself, its bare, filthy feet kicking as though trying to push Chan away. Chan shifted the cloak on his shoulders, letting the hood fall back. He held his ground, though. "Damn it. Why couldn't you speak a real language, kid?"

Chan sighed. "Of course, everything riding on my shoulders. I hate when everything comes down to me. Let somebody else have that kind of pressure, but no-o-o-o, it's gotta be Chan. How is that fair?"

With a grumble, Chan sat on one of the edges of the racks which had been built into the wall, and then abandoned when the vault fell into disuse. "The problem is if you flip out and try to kill us, there's not much I can do but kill you. I'm not an earthbender. Firebending's pretty much kill or nothing, which limits my options. You must know all about that, don't you?"

The child stopped shaking, which was good. Well, better. Chan tried to figure out how to say it properly. "_Do you want out?_" he managed.

The child moved its hands down from its face, just a little. The eyes, that just wasn't right. One of them was a bright green, but the other was both misshapen and discolored. From what Chan knew about eyes, which admittedly wasn't much, it was almost certainly blind in it. Come one, it didn't even have a pupil in that one! The child stared at Chan for a long moment.

"Well?" he asked, in the wrong language, forcing him to repeat it in the right one.

Trama shrunk back, as though trying to sink into the wall. Chan stood, and took a step toward the child. "This isn't going to work if you're fighting us. I don't know what I'm supposed to do right now. How do I tell Yui?"

Chan turned again, but this time when he tried to step toward the exit of the vault, he found himself checked. One spindly arm, with remarkable strength, had grabbed onto the hem of Chan's cloak and was clasping it in a death-grip, staring hard at Chan. Chan tried to tug it away, but he'd might as well have tried to pull out a full grown tree by the roots. "What?" he asked. He took a step backward, but Trama's grip meant that it only forced him to lean, the cloak still thoroughly entangled in the emaciated hand. "Do you want something? Can you even speak?"

The child let out a groan. Just at the edge of Chan's sensation, he could have sworn he heard something. A sharp stab of panic slipped into his spine. He quickly unbuckled the clasp of the cloak, letting it slide off and pool on the floor. Trama didn't waste an instant. It took the broad cloak and swept it over its head, cocooning itself against its corner, under the cloak. The incessant shuddering that its small body exhibited began to slow, and finally come to a stop. Chan heard a tiny sigh, almost like relief, come from the child.

"What are you...?"

"_I want out,_" the voice came, high and reedy, and tired, and afraid. "_I don't want to fight anymore._"

Chan gave a glance toward the door, but then turned back to the child. He leaned down, letting the flame dim a bit. "_We'll get you out of here,_" he said haltingly and influently. "_Have faith._"

With that, Chan turned and left. He managed to close the door, and even get around the corner as he heard those clattering footsteps approaching. More Dai Li. Forcing himself to walk normally was far harder than he expected as he began to pass those working in the palace. Mostly, because he had to work very hard not to give into the whole-body shudder which he desperately wanted to release.

He was blind to the grandeur, to the gold, to the wealth around him, until he finally made it back into Yui's room. She wasn't here, which meant she must have been trotted out for something. Chan didn't know, and he really didn't care. They were leaving. They had the plan set firmly in their minds and nowhere else. Chan made sure that every physical trace they left about it was burnt beyond ashes. He was a hero to her, and he wasn't about to muck that up. It was time he earned the respect he had always demanded. It was time that he became the hero Yui saw.

"Oh, this is going to get bloody," Chan muttered to himself, his back to the door. He just hoped the blood wouldn't be theirs.

* * *

Behind a wall of carefully cut glass, golden eyes scanned the terrain. Dust was flying in the morning, swept by the wind from the mountains. Much as Azula wanted to deny it, she was coming more and more to dependant on the glasses to see. If nothing else, today, they kept the grit out of her eyes. Azula swung her legs to one side, and dropped off of the rock she had been sitting on, and quickly made her way back to the men and women who found themselves under her command. Her soldiers, and Ked. She frowned, seeing him up here, trying to pull armor on.

"As much as I appreciate the gesture, I'd prefer if you _didn't_ die today," Azula said, raising an eyebrow at his struggles.

"What? I'm supposed to be pr..." he stopped, looking into the distance as his rational mind caught up to his emotive one. "Yeah, like _I'm_ going to be able to protect you in battle."

"Like she'll even need it," one of the Gurkhas said with a chuckle. This drew a blush from Ked. She leaned in close to him.

"You need to stay back with the civilians. There are going to be innocent people hurt today, there's no way around that. You have to keep them moving. I have no intention of leaving anybody behind. Are you capable of that?"

Ked sighed, and looked her in the eye. "I still think this plan is insane."

"The best are," Azula admitted. She gave him a peck on the cheek, upon he turned and moved back to the milling forms of the families Azul and Loyo Lah. She turned to Sokka, who was lounging in his armor and lazily twirling the white sword. "I notice you didn't weigh in?"

"Before a fight is no time to be a prick," Sokka said with a shrug. He adjusted the wolf-head helm on his head. The first time she saw him in his pale blue Water Tribe armor, it actually gave Azula a pang of nostalgia. The good old days when she was trying to kill him. When he gave her an unexpected hair cut on the day of Black Sun. Bizarre as it was to hold that sort of empathy for a time she was essentially Ozai's slave, she still felt warmly of that time.

She hoped at some point to stop being so bloody irrational.

Azula took a few steps forward. The wind was bringing sounds of motion to her ears from every direction. They were encircled. They were outnumbered. And she needed to pull a win out of this. "Men, we are in the fight of our lives," Azula said. "If we fail, every single one of is will die to the blades of old enemies and foreign mercenaries."

"That's great. Open with a joke," Sokka snarked.

"Which is why I know that none of you will give anything less than a heroic effort," Azula powered on, giving the Tribesman a glare. "We will cut through the heart of their line. You will spread out that line and hold them back, while the rest get the civilians through. It will not be easy. We will be beset on all sides. To our rear will come a charge of Komodo Dragons. To our sides will be hundreds of firebenders and infantrymen. And we will be tasked with bearing a delicate cargo. It's like..." she pondered a proper metaphor.

"Getting an egg out of a swine-chicken's ass?" Sokka prompted.

"Inelegant, but appropriate," Azula said.

"And where will you be?"

"At the bleeding edge," Azula said. "I cut a hole. The Gurkha expand it. But there is one more task I must ask of you. When we get the rest out, we will be pursued, and with the cavalry on our tails, we would be run down long before we reach Azul. Some of you will need to..."

As one, almost a hundred men stepped forward, faces determined.

"There is almost no chance of survival," Azula said. "If you take this task, it will be almost certain death."

"The Gurkha dies, it does not break," one said.

"Jai Maho Agni, Ayo Gurkhali!" the other volunteers shouted. She turned, and saw that Iñagoh was one step forward, with the rest of the Gurkhas.

"You can't do this," Azula pointed out. "The Coordinator..."

"I don't give a damn what my grandfather says. I am a brother to my men," Iñagoh smirked for a moment. "Besides, I'm too pretty to die. I'll see you in Grand Fire. Mark my words."

Azula stared the young man in the eye, certain it would be for the last time. She gave him a nod, then turned so that the sun, rising over the mountains, was at her back. "Everybody draw blades and fire. Move out!"

And the army charged, full of wrath and rancor, into the jaws of the beast. At their head, the point of a spear, blue flames in her hands and in her soul, charged Azula.

* * *

The Secretariat scratched a report to his superior as he waited. Long Feng had to be kept in the loop, because Han Hua's success was intimately tied to Long Feng's own. His one green eye ran across the page; it was somewhat premature to declare his victory, his crushing of the enemy. Unlike those fools from the Fire Nation, he never declared victory until _after_ it happened. But it still was good to have it penned out in advance. One never knew what would come in the hectic end of a battle.

"Secretariat Han?" a soldier whom he never bothered to learn the name of ducked into the tent. From the uniform, he was actually navy, not army, and high ranked. However, he was an Embiar, not Dai Li nor even an Easterner, so he was mostly beneath Han Hua's notice. "We are hearing very little back."

"It is a battle, confusion is endemic," Han Hua said evenly and patronizingly.

"Sir, I don't think you grasp the gravity of this situation. Rhino Riders are going silent. They're _never_ silent."

"Maybe they've finally learned the importance of secrecy in this _ambush_," Han pointed out.

"That's not all. We're getting sporadic reports that the enemy have broken camp. Azul is on the move."

"Good. We will crush them with their backs to the mountain passes."

"Sir, they aren't headed for the passes," he said with power and verve. "They're headed here!"

Han Hua looked up, his one eye glinting. "What."

"The entire army is charging toward this position."

"So they run headlong into the arms of death? Well, how very accommodating of them," Han said with a dry chuckle.

"Goddamn it, you foreign heathen, listen to me!" the wayward admiral shouted. "They are charging the weakest point in our lines! We can't pull the regiment in fast enough!"

Han glared, unimpressed with his harsh words.

"You might want to rethink what you call me. When they hit the lines, I don't doubt that they'll be crushed under the weight of the men. That is what you people do."

"You shouldn't be in charge of this," the man sneered. "You're not military. You don't know the first thing about actual battle. The soldiers here were the anvil. They're conscripts and recruits so raw that they still find wet behind their ears each morning, held in place to deny them retreat. Well, they aren't retreating. They're going to cut through like molten iron through ice. And when they do, they will charge right through this camp."

Han Hua didn't like the sound of that. But he also didn't think it was very likely.

"You are being preposterous. There is no way that twelve hundred men can cut through twenty thousand."

"They don't need to," he answered. It occurred to Han Hua in that moment who this person was, a distant memory called up from the deep. "They only need to beat five thousand. And they have Sokka Baihu leading them."

"That is quite enough, Admiral... Chan," Han Hua said. "Do your job. Crush the upstarts and the Azuli. I will hear nothing more of this."

The man glared, running a hand through grey hair. "I really hope there aren't idiots like you at Yuchiban, where my son is stationed," he muttered, before heading out. Han Hua glared at him as he left, but then discarded him from his mind. Twelve hundred could not beat twenty thousand. It was as simple as that. There was nothing more to it.

But there was a niggling doubt, just a hair of worry. He glanced over his shoulder, to the long, wrapped form he kept standing against the pole which supported the canopy of the tent. Procuring rubber had been extremely difficult, with almost all sources lying in the hands of the Red Flame, but if it worked, it would be worth it. If only to see the look on her face when her greatest attempts failed.

Putting the absurd out of his mind, Han Hua carefully blotted the paper, and waited for it to dry. He drank the bitter local drink which they served instead of tea. Not quite as pleasant on the tongue, but it had wonderful effects on his focus and clarity. Be patient. That's all he had to do; be patient, and let things sort out as they inevitably would. After all, twelve hundred couldn't defeat an army of twenty thousand.

It was inconceivable.

* * *

Fire was the world.

And at its heart, stood Azula.

Every joint and muscle in her body screamed at her to stop, to rest, to do anything but keep fighting, but they were in the thick, now. Once, many years before, when Iroh had been besieging Ba Sing Se, he once found his position surrounded and cut off. He described it in the letter that he sent home that week as 'the most target rich environment that he had ever seen.' That was certainly how Azula felt right now. For whatever worth it was that they cut through the weakest part of the army, it also had the downside of having the most soldiers, and every one of them was a pang of conscience digging into her. It almost made her regret bothering to reclaim that sealed off section of her mind. These were her countrymen. And she was killing them.

A hastily conjured wave of fire, bright blue but more similar to Jeong Jeong's favored method, swept away from her hands, eating of her power and transforming it into living warfare. The rookies and the conscripts dove and clawed out of its way, letting a path open up, however briefly, through the mass of bodies, until the firebending unraveled and snuffed. Not very long. A few seconds. But a few seconds made for a few yards, and that was precious gain, right now.

"We're not moving fast enough!" Iñagoh shouted over the din of screams and clattering of iron.

"Don't complain if you can't do anything to change it!" Azula roared back. She launched herself into a pocket of resistance trying to refill the void that they had, in their wavering courage, emptied. One of them, a boy perhaps the age of Ked's sister, furiously tried to firebend, but his panic made a mess of it so badly that only a wisp of smoke wafted away from his fists. Understandable. When you lose control, you lose your firebending. It was why the insane could not firebend. If only the same could be said of other elemental martial arts. With a lash forward of a long-booted foot, she kicked the boy in the chin, knocking him senseless onto his back, and creating a blastwave of percussion to hurl the rest of the squad away.

"Keep those people moving!" Iñagoh shouted, and she could feel the force behind her press into the gap which she kept on advancing. She was the edge of the knife, and the flesh of the Blue Flame army parted as she walked. Which meant she must not falter. Binding around this blade would be bad news indeed.

Azula turned to shout something to the swordsman who was keeping her back clear, but found instead a twenty pace gap between her and anybody else. Her left eye twitched at that. "Where the hell is Sokka?" she roared.

Iñagoh yanked hard, hooking a soldier off of her feet and smashing her into the ground with a swift blow from his military hammer. When he finished, he looked back up, around, and motioned to one side of the battle line. She saw him there, well away from where he was supposed to be, scything through the soldiers with wild, almost insane abandon.

"Move the line!" Azula shouted, before urging her tired body to where the Tribesman was flowing through the soldiers like a river of razor-edged death. "Sokka! What are you doing? You're supposed to be watching my back!"

Sokka ignored her, his blue eyes almost as sharp as his sword. He gave her one glance, and in that glance, she did not see anything of the jolly, foolish polymath who had joined her on Gwynt. These eyes belonged to some mad predator. Something which killed, just to feel the blood on its face. It was so unexpected that she actually hesitated so long that one of the terrified soldiers almost managed to stab her in the face with his spear.

Growling at herself for being such an idiot, she smashed the spearhead away from her, and then levied the edge of her hand against the haft, snapping the weapon, before kicking at the shattered stump, driving it painfully into the soldier's groin. She moved to Sokka's back. "Get back in position, Sokka!"

"Don't tell me what to do, firebender," his voice was barely human, let alone the man she had come to know. She grabbed his shoulder, turning him toward her, and he answered that with a fist directly into Azula's nose. Stunned, she slowly picked herself off the ground, wiping the blood which was now flowing out of her nose and across her lips. It took her rather a while to get her bearings, but still she managed to deflect another attempt to kill her without paying it much attention. As she was getting to her balance back, she felt somebody grab her arm and haul her to her feet. Grey eyes appraised her briefly, before nodding.

"What the fuck is going on with Baihu?" Iñagoh shouted.

"Ked warned me about this, he's gone blood drunk," Azula said, wiping the blood one last time from her nose. Her glasses were broken, so she discarded them; she'd left a spare set in Grand Fire. She would either collect them when she returned, or never. And she also knew that she had to do something unfortunate, because she would never forgive herself if she hurt Ty Lee "Get the civilians through the gap. I'll go after Sokka."

"What gap?" Iñagoh asked.

Azula turned toward the edge of the conflict, still a not inconsiderable distance away. She took a deep breath, grasping ahold of that sum content of her pool of chi. Well, not the entire contents. She wasn't trying to rearrange the geography of Azul. But much of it. With a flick of her hands, a movement closer to earthbending than any firebending form she'd been taught, there was a shape which appeared, a void in the air like a sausage almost a mile long. It expanded outward, detonating with such force as to hurl away bodily everybody caught nearby. Those too close, did not survive the experience. She would worry about those unfortunates later. A good portion of the army which was already wavering broke into full flight under that provocation, opening up a corridor.

"That gap," Azula said, unsteady on her feet. It was taxing to firebend like that. Doubly so when she was already tired. But she had to keep Ty Lee's husband alive, because Azula was not going to see that woman cry again. "Don't just stand there, run! That hole isn't going to be there forever!"

Azula spat out a spray of dribbling blood from her face and set off after the hints of blue which was wading deeper into the melee. Not today, Sokka, she thought. You're coming out of this alive if it kills you.

* * *

"So what'cha doin' here in Azul?" Ty Lee asked enthusastically.

"Oh, not much," her sister said. She gave a glance toward the students which the airbender didn't notice, because she cleared her throat and did it more obviously. This time, Ty Lee grasped what her older sister was trying to say.

"Students, would you mind giving me and my little sister some time to catch up?" Ty Lee asked. One of the boys at the front drooped a bit at that.

"Ah, but I've been really tryin'. And I don't know if I can afford another lesson," the boy whined. Ty Lee shot a glance to Aan Jee, who shrugged.

"You know what, don't worry about that," Ty Lee forced a grin onto her face, which was unpleasant, because what she was really feeling was annoyed. She didn't like acting against what she felt. "How about we just call this one a freebie, okay?"

The children let out a bunch of hoorays and rushed forward to hug her legs. In that moment, the annoyance melted away, looking down at all of those happy children. She wondered if she really wanted children of her own. She'd need to talk it over with Sokka. Much as she knew she'd be a great mom, if he wasn't on board, it would ruin things between them. She didn't see that as likely. He'd be a great dad. Of course, Ty Lee was somewhat ignorant of his occasional anger issues, so her view was a touch biased. When the students began to wander away, Aan Jee let out a weary sigh and leaned onto Basu's paw. Basu retracted that paw, letting the eldest Baihu fall onto her rear. It was almost like Basu could read Ty Lee's mind.

"So, what brings you to Azul?" Aan Jee asked from the ground.

"What were you doing with those children?"

"What? Times have been tough what with this whole 'civil war' thing going on. But I tell you, if this is really a civil war, then I'm a Tribesman. Nobody invades Azul. Nobody with a brain, anyway."

"Yeah, turns out it isn't a civil war," Ty Lee agreed.

"I knew it," Aan Jee said singsong, as she got to her feet, striking the dust off of pink clothes. How out of date. Ty Lee had moved on to yellows years ago. "Look, I don't exactly work well in the... shall we say... more legal aspects of society. Never have. And as long as there was a shadow economy, well, it suited me just fine. But with all of these soldiers, nobody I worked with is willing to poke their heads up, for fear of having it smashed in by a club. It's been a very hungry season for me."

"So you make money lying to children?" Ty Lee was quite annoyed now, her arms tucked under her breasts and her foot tapping. Aan Jee let out a defeated sigh.

"It didn't start out that way. Just 'a couple of pointers' so that I could get a warm meal and a place to sleep where I wouldn't get rained on. Yeah, that's what I get for looking like you," she shook her head, braid waving. "But then things started to take on a life of their own, and before I knew it, I had money again, and people were seeking me out. Well, seeking _you_ out, but it's the same thing in the end."

"It's not right to play on people's beliefs and string them along," Ty Lee stressed.

"It's not stringing them along if I don't actually promise them anything," Aan Jee countered. "Besides, it's put me in a position where I might be able to help you."

"What?"

"Yeah, since people thought I was you, they kept sending me stuff. You know, files and information, because they thought I'd send it to your husband. You know, the pretty one?"

"You have intelligence for Sokka?" Ty Lee asked, failing to recognize the joke.

"A bit. He seems like the sort who's always looking for it."

Aan Jee reached into her cleavage and withdrew the scrolls, handing them to Ty Lee. She made a face at them. "Oh, they're all sweaty," she muttered.

"Yeah, well, that does happen," Aan Jee admitted. "One time, I had to hide an entire calligraphy set. You wouldn't believe where I put it."

"And I really don't want to know," Ty Lee said, a note of alarm in her voice.

"Oh, don't be like that. You love my stories of misadventure," Aan Jee said with a nudge to her identical sister. "And I notice you still haven't answered my question. What's brought you to Azul? It couldn't have been me."

"You remember my friend Azula?"

"The crazy bitch in charge of the Blue Flame? How could I not?"

"Don't talk about her like that! She's on our side!" Ty Lee said, her tone hurt. Aan Jee sighed.

"Fine, I'll take your word for it. What about her?"

"She's getting Montoya Azul and the rest of his family out of the mountains before Long Feng finds them and crushes them like an egg," Ty Lee summed up their mission quite concisely. "Of course, that was yesterday, and I haven't heard from her. I'm starting to get a bit worried."

"Yeah, you were the type to worry," Aan Jee pointed out. "Look, from what I know of her, I doubt anything could get in her way for long," there was a moment of silence between identical sisters. The only difference between them was the color of their clothing. "So she's really not evil?"

"Nope."

"Wow. That's a shocking development," Aan Jee shrugged.

"Uh huh. She's in love, too."

"That Embiar boy she was running around with years ago?"

"Him? Oh, no, not him," Ty Lee said sadly. "No, he's... not the one. But she's better now. You'd like her. I bet you two could talk about all sorts of things!"

Aan Jee let out a laugh. "As much as I enjoy a thrill-filled and interesting life, I think I'm going to stay away from that quagmire. It might just be me, but it seems like calamity follows that woman around."

* * *

If Azula were a more superstitious woman, she might have started to believe, at some point, that calamity was following her around. The ground was quenched, unusual for this dry time of year in Azul, but only because of bloodshed. Still, she had been fighting since she was five years old, so she lost neither time nor sight of the Tribesman as he carved his way into the Blue Flame. Ignoring the pain in her nose and making the best of her compromised vision, she deftly dodged her way through the squads of soldiers, who were growing more sturdy, well trained, and eager as she moved away from her own force. It was a fools task, but when it came to her admittedly few friends, let it be said that Azula was something of a fool. Well, as long as nobody actually _said_ it, because then she'd need to make an example.

Azula felt an odd tenderness as she lashed out with blasts of searing flame. Like when she vaporized the island near Pulse, there was a feeling like she had overtaxed herself. Not surprising, really. But still, now as then, she kept pressing forward. One soldier in particular, in his middle years and of strapping build, moved to intercept her. He was an Embiar, and considering that most people started to manifest their firebending in their teenage years, and that it took between ten and fifteen years to reach the plateau of one's power, he was about as threatening an opponent as most soldiers would be forced to face. Azula didn't even bat an eye at him.

He rushed forward, his fists slamming forward into a column of bright yellow fire. She gave it no more effort to deflect than a simple Agni Kai block, using her own fire to deflect it away. The glare the attack sent into her wounded eyes was actually far more devastating than the heat or impact, but she persevered. As he twisted to send out another column toward her, she lashed out with an even swifter attack, low toward his boots. He broke his stance and stumbled back so as to not have her cyan flames vaporize his feet. She continued to press, advancing on him as she did, until he tripped over a rock and landed on his back. She swiftly bolted to his side, driving her heel down in a brutal axe kick which landed directly between his navel and diaphragm. Right into the Pool of Chi. He let out an agonized groan and curled in on himself as though she had just braised his genitalia.

That distraction out of the way, she cast her gaze around. The armor of the people here was much more complete than the patchwork and inexpensive armors of the recruits. It was also of uniform color, a bright blue. That made it far harder for Azula to see the pale blue of Sokka's armor. "Agni damn it, Baihu, why did you have to go crazy now?" she demanded darkly.

She panned past him, then her mind caught up to her eyes, and she locked on again. It wasn't that she had to watch for pale blue against bright blue. She just had to look for shocking, scarlet red. With a growl which might have been a profanity in a language itself too blasphemous to put to paper, she moved after him again. Considering how spread out the groups were, out here, it wasn't nearly as difficult as it had been in the thick.

"Sokka, stop this at once!" Azula shouted. Sokka answered by twisting and hurling his boomerang at her. Her eyes went wide and she managed to hit the deck in time for it to miss her head. She got back to her feet, a scowl on her face. "If you don't stop this, I will have to st–"

She was cut off when something hit her in the back of the head. Shaking stars from her vision for the second time in five minutes, she spotted his boomerang laying on the ground nearby. And how the hell had that happened? It was another moment before her higher cognition kicked in, because that was when she remembered that boomerangs tended to circle back if thrown properly. A difficult and dangerous art to perfect, extremely effective if mastered. She let out another growled profanity, grabbing the boomerang and shoving it into her belt.

She forced herself to her feet once again. It was getting increasingly difficult to do so. She managed to keep her feet under her again, as she watched him cut down the last of the group he had waded into. Hunched like a beast, he swung his head, to and fro, looking for his next victims. As a brutal, slasher smile spread across his ordinarily harmless and goofy features, she ran forward once again, getting some momentum. He spotted her quickly enough, and his blade lashed out toward her. But while she was hardly as masterful as she was at firebending, she was no slouch with the blade herself. Pulling her long knife from its sheath in the small of her back, she deflected the cut away from her, and lashed forward with a brutal kick to his stomach. He took it with barely a flinch. "Don't make me put you down, Baihu! You're long overdue!"

"Like you even could," Sokka's voice was crazed, as were his eyes. He lashed forward again, and her own eyes went wide with alarm as she found herself furiously deflecting his bright blade with her own much lesser specimen. But it was enough to keep her from being cut to ribbons. That would have to be enough. Because he wasn't thinking. However effective he was, he wasn't being his usual, almost supernaturally effective self. He was operating off of muscle memory, no imagination. No consciousness.

She twisted the blade in her hand, switching her grip and locking the blades together, the two of them straining against each other. Sokka had reach, but he was no stronger than she was. And she had flexibility. Not even fully aware of the smirk which grew on her face, she twisted, letting his bloodied blade just nick along her cheek, before grabbing his forearm with her other hand. She pulled hard, and levied a kick directly into his shoulder blade, which emitted a horrible pop and the blade fell from his hand. His entire arm seemed to slump lower, as it dropped out of its socket.

"I'm not finished yet!" Sokka's scream chilled the blood.

But even if he wasn't, she was. She reached forward with one hand, cradling his brow, and let a pulse of electricity connect her thumb and pinky, with a brief detour through the Tribesman's skull. Not much. Just enough to make every muscle in the Tribesman's body lock up rigid as a board, and cause him to tip over onto the ground.

Azula glanced around. The others were giving the two of them a wide berth, but now that there was only one, they would doubtless converge quickly. She let out an exasperated sigh, and dragged the barely sensate Tribesman to something like a stand, his non-dislocated arm draped over her shoulder as she began to guide him toward the edge of the line.

"W-w-wha happ'n'd?" Sokka's voice was heavily slurred, and he didn't seem particularly with it.

"We're leaving," she answered. "And don't you ever claim to have the mental high-ground with me ever again."

"Di' I lose't 'gain?" Sokka mushed, his gait as unsteady as his speech.

"Don't make a habit of it," Azula ordered. She could see an uneven smile settle onto his face.

"Yes ma'am," he answered.

* * *

Han Hua leaned forward on the tower which had been built in quite a bit of haste here at the edge of the camp. It was all wood, quite unlike the metal fortifications that they would use given half a chance. This thing had just been erected in ten minutes so that he would have some place to look above the broken terrain and see what lay beyond. And he did not like what he saw.

"This is... inconceivable," he muttered.

The back edge of the army was only a few hundred yards away. Just out of arrowshot. But from above, Han Hua could see what lay beyond that back edge. Pressing outward like a Horror Beetle erupting from its parasitized host, the force of fifteen hundred cut through. The army which should, by any reckoning, be crushing them under weight of numbers alone, buckled, wavered, and finally broke. And out streamed the Gurkha, and with them, Azul. Somewhere in that mass which broke through and began to sprint toward the camp, was Montoya Azul. Somewhere, and he had no ability whatsoever to find him, or capture him.

"But why are they running toward the camp?" he asked nobody in particular. But then, his remaining eye widened as he spotted the first of the Gurkha slashing the remount lines for the Komodo Rhinos. More and more of them turned and raced back toward their afoot counterparts, sweeping them up into the saddle, until the beasts were under full load, whence they turned one final time, and broke toward the city for which the noble house took their name. He just shook his head, watching this all happen in minutes, as his grand plan fell apart.

He only had one word rolling through his mind as he watched.

"Inconceivable."

Admiral Chan was going to be insufferably smug.

* * *

"So what are you going to do now?" Ty Lee asked her older sister.

"To tell the truth, I really don't know. I had a lot of fun out here in Azul. But I'm beginning to think that it might just be time to move on. Like with Ember."

"You almost got your hands cut off. I think that would count as a sign," Ty Lee admitted. Aan Jee laughed briefly and dryly at that. She bit her lower lip for a moment, trying to figure out the best way to say it. Failing that, she just out and said it. "You could always go home?"

"Home?" Aan Jee scoffed. "Home is a four letter word to me, Sis."

"Well, yeah," Ty Lee agreed. Then she saw the slanted glance which Aan Jee was giving her. "Ooooooh. Right. 'Cause of what Zhu Di said? You can't take that to heart. She's always a bit sharp, with everybody."

"That isn't the reason and you know it," Aan Jee said, but not harshly.

"Well... you could always come to Grand Fire. Zuko would love to have you. They've got lots of space," she pointed out. And more quietly, she added. "And I'd know you were safe."

"That's the thing, Sis," Aan Jee said patiently. "I don't do safe. Never have. And I don't do still," she cast out her arms before her. "There's an entire world out there, just waiting for me to take a swing at it, and it's not going to wait forever. I need to feel the road under my feet. I always have. That was what you taught me. To never get complacent. To never be... satisfied."

"But is that a good thing?" Ty Lee asked. "Sometimes, isn't it nice to just have something, and be glad you have it, rather than angry that you don't have more?"

Aan Jee sighed, and nodded. "You know, you might be right. But that doesn't change what I want. Right now, I want to... go places. See things. I want to experience. I'm not ready for settled, and I'm not ready for safe," she admitted. She glanced up, staring into Ty Lee's eyes with a pair identical to them. "But I'm getting the feeling that you are. You want a family, don't you?"

"I haven't thought about that."

"Fei hua," she countered. "You've thought about it. You're thinking about it now."

"Maybe," she admitted. She gave her sister a hug. "Don't stay too far away, okay? Send letters. I want to hear about all the interesting things my sister did."

Aan Jee smiled at that, a smile which, not the overpowering and beaming grin which Ty Lee favored, still held a familiar warmth. "Alright. As a favor to you. After all, you can't keep going forever, can you?"

"Neither can you."

"Maybe, but I'll give it a hell of a shot," Aan Jee answered with a smirk. "Take care of your Tribesman. And don't let Zhu Di get all..."

"Zhu Di-ish?" Ty Lee offered.

"That's the best way of putting it, yeah," Aan Jee agreed. "I guess I'll see you again, some day."

"I hope it isn't long," Ty Lee said.

Without another word, and only a sedate smile, the airbender and the con-artist parted, and walked their separate ways. Ty Lee bounded up onto Basu's head, and gave the reins a flick. "Give'r, Basu," she said, her voice subdued. The great bison gave a hop and lifted into the air. She let out a pained sigh. "I wonder if I'll ever see her again."

* * *

It was a testament to how dangerous lightning was to the human brain that when Azula finally kicked, stabbed, and blasted her way out of the back of the Blue Flame line, Sokka was still barely able to walk, so she had to support him to get any amount of speed out of the Tribesman. She, too, wasn't moving at her best speed, because the intervening period had seen a few attacks get very close to killing her. There were more near-misses by arrows and slashes across her borrowed red and purple armor than she cared to think about.

With a face painted the national color quite accidentally, she staggered to a familiar face, one she really hoped would have made it further. "Iñagoh, why aren't you at the defile?" her voice rang in her ears. Unconscious firebending could do many things, but protecting her hearing was not one of them. The grandson of the Coordinator looked much better for wear than many of the Gurkha around him, and he let out a sigh.

"We've run out of time. The cavalry is five minutes out at the most," Iñagoh said. He shouted to one of his compatriots. "We're going to have to hold them here."

"It'll be a slaughter and you know it."

"Then you'd better ride fast and ride hard," he said. A loud grunt almost went unheard by Azula's damaged hearing, so when a partially snapped-off horn intruded into her vision, she jumped a bit. She would rightly blame her temporary deafness for that reaction; it wasn't easy to get Komodo Rhinos to surprise one. "Don't make me tell you twice, Princess. You fought your fight. Now let me fight mine."

Azula nodded, her face expressionless. "You do credit to your organization," she said.

"And you do credit to your name," Iñagoh answered. Azula shoved Sokka up into the saddle, and found he actually assumed the proper form without a thought, obvious from the bleary look in his eye. Azula got up in front of him, and snapped the reins. "Don't stop until you taste the sea air!"

"'Zula?" Sokka asked, his voice less slurred, but much more slow and uneven of tone.

"What?"

"When did I get on a Rhino?"

"Just now," Azula said. Truth be told, it was remarkably hard to stay upright. Between her bloodloss and fatigue, and his electroconvulsive reset, they were the riding wounded. The ground sped past them, a streak to her wounded eyes and his sputtering percept. It was almost a blur, time punctuated solely by pain when the movement of the beast jostled her wounds, which was often. But despite her notable difficulties, she kept her eyes, for such worth as they were, scanning constantly. The pain gave her focus. It kept her wary.

Which was why the first boulder that flew at her head didn't smash it into pulp. She sawed on the reins, bringing the beast up short, but not short enough. The block, roughly the size of a man's torso clipped the beast's head, stunning it. It stumbled, and Azula got a bead on who was attacking. It was an earthbender, who only had one eye, and something strapped to his back. Azula didn't have time for this, nor the stamina remaining for something flashy. So she opted for the simplest, most efficient means of spreading death she had at her disposal. She snapped her hand toward the man, and a crackle of lightning answered her. There was a moment of building-up, and then a thunderclap as that lightning bridged the distance.

But the earthbender did something Azula really didn't expect. He tore the thing from his back and slammed it into the ground directly before him. The lightning, which had been searing toward his chest, slammed into that pole right near its head. The cloth covering it spontaneously burst into flames, showing a copper rod, clad in rubber where he grasped it. The lightning crackled at its top, and fingers of it reached out along its foot. He'd grounded out her attack. The instant of shock she displayed was too much, because in that scant moment, he lashed forward again, another assault, which smashed into the two of them. She took the worst of it, to a peal of snapping ribs and horrible agony. It was a different kind of pain than she had experience with. Sudden, shocking, and blunt. When her vision cleared, somewhat, she was lying on the ground, on her back, and the beast had staggered a short distance. But Sokka, stunned as he was, reached to her back, and pulled the boomerang from her belt. With a throw so awkward even Azula could have emulated it, he set it to the air. It did not cut a graceful circle, cutting delicately on the breeze. No, it was little better than a hurled rock. But it struck the earthbender, smashing him between the eyes and sending him reeling away.

"W'r not makin' the boats," Sokka muttered, pawing at his shirt. He pulled something from a pocket, and began to blow on it. He stumbled over to one knee, and looked up. Azula looked up, against the rising sun, and saw what he saw.

It was large.

It was flying.

It was white.

It landed with a horrendous thud, halfway between the Gurkha's last stand, and the outskirts of the city of Azul. The airbender on its brow bounded off, and seemed for a moment paralyzed with the choice of being concerned for Sokka, and being concerned for Azula. Ty Lee managed to break that paralysis, by opting to hug them both at once, which drew an anguished yelp of pain from Azula.

"Help her. Ribs're broke," Sokka said, unsteadily getting to his feet. He gave a glance toward the earthbender, who was himself beginning to rise, but probably realized as Azula did, that for the time being, his boomerang wasn't coming back.

"I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry," Ty Lee chanted as she carefully hoisted Azula onto the bison's back. Sokka carefully helped her lay out on the bison, and Azula couldn't restrain a moan of pain when the beast took to the sky. "Sokka, where's Ked? We need to get her to Ked!"

"Ocean," Azula wheezed. "On a boat. Somewhere."

Sokka just looked like he couldn't believe what happened. And bearing in mind what happened, it wasn't that surprising.

"What happened?" Ty Lee asked, looking between her husband and her friend.

Azula and Sokka shared a glance. That bleary look was slowly dissolving away from his expression, as the after effect of her hard-reset of his cognition slowly faded. "We won. More or less," Sokka said slowly.

* * *

Han Hua held a bandage to his bleeding forehead. There wasn't much point to it, since the blood wouldn't get into his good eye, but still, it was aggravating. He shot a glare at his counterpart, who had the double annoyance of losing a portion of his fleet, captured by the Azuli on their way out into the ocean.

"Not one word," Han said darkly. Admiral Chan either wisely obeyed his directive, or else simply had nothing more to say.

This was going to hurt him and his goals, somewhat. He would have to take active steps to remedy this. Personal steps. But he knew he had it in him. But he sighed, as he reached into his coat and extracted the letter-carrier that he had prepared. With only a modicum of care, he threw the whole thing, contents still inside, onto the flames of a nearby brazier. That declaration of victory had proven to be somewhat premature. Han Hua would not make that mistake again.

"So. The Family Azul is out of our hands. Our navy is out of position to intercept them. In three days, they'll be safe in Grand Fire. What now?"

Han Hua smirked. "Now, we move on to Plan E."

Admiral Chan scowled.

"Plan E?"

"Draw them out of their fortified positions. And the best way to do that, is to hit the Fire Lord where he is weakest. In his heart. He is the kind of man who bleeds when others are hurt. And as it will hurt him most to target his people, we make him suffer, by making Azul suffer." Han Hua said. "Plan E. Exterminate."

"Exterminate?" the admiral asked. Han Hua smiled, then. It was not a pleasant smile.

"Exterminate."

* * *

_Yeah, Han Hua isn't nearly as clever as he thinks he is. Just like the guy I based him off of._

_Leave a review._


	22. With Great Power

**Moping seems to have done me some good. That, and feedback from my loquacious readers inspired me to kick myself in the ass and put in something that needed putting in. And this was the one, solitary spot in the story wherein it would have fit. There's only a little bit left now. A breather-episode (this one), then onto the three part finale. Well, two parts and an epilogue, anyway. I just ran the numbers, though. All in, the entirety of the Children of the War series clocked in at just over three quarters of a million words. 770,000, or thereabouts. And I've only been writing it since the execrable movie was released in July. As a writer, I have never had such a surge of productiveness in my life. Now that the story's done, I'm not exactly sure what to do with myself. I have other ideas, but I need some time to figure them out.**

**Anyway: part of the last lesson is contained within. Try to figure it out.**

* * *

Azula didn't pride herself on being delicate or sensitive, but she was still no small bit relieved when the first Uhlan abandoned her to other duties, and a second took his place. The first, a dark, brooding older man with all of the bedside manner and couth of a battle axe, and had dismissed her injuries, as 'not worth his time'. The second, a copper haired woman named Bethesda of all monikers, not much older than Zuko, had been much more accommodating.

"Alright, now lift your arm up as far as you can, and stop when it becomes painful," the woman directed. She was somewhat terse, which was no problem for Azula, but much more useful. For one thing, she actually bothered to use her healing skills as a waterbender on Azula's broken ribs. The once-and-never Princess of the Fire Nation did as directed, and found that distance was actually quite short. Bethesda did not judge or grant scorn. Which was lucky for her. Instead, she just set to work.

"I must say, this is taking a long time," Azula pointed out in the woman's native tongue.

"Lunars have always been better healers," Bethesda said idly.

"And what exactly is a Lunar?"

Bethesda frowned a bit in her work. To the waterbender's credit, the pain was ebbing. "Those people who learned waterbending from the moon," Azula must have had a querulous look on her face, because she rolled her eyes and explained. "Most bending arts are taught by animals, right? Dragons for firebending, badgermoles for earthbending, and so on. Well, way back in the day, Whalesh learned waterbending from the Unagi."

"I hadn't heard that," Azula said. And not surprising, considering how most of her history lessons turned out to be utter propaganda. "And what became of this?"

"Oh, the descendants of the Eel died off back during the rise of Adam and his empire," she answered. "We're Lunars now, too. We just don't have the experience at it."

Azula pondered that for a moment. Azulon must not have known about that, back when he set about 'purging' Great Whales and the South of their waterbending population. If they could learn from those same monstrosities which proved a maritime and shipping nightmare for anybody on the south shores of Ember and Sozu, then it was utterly fruitless to try to stamp it out. When the Avatar reappeared, he or she would just learn it directly from the beast.

Her family did seem to love a hopeless cause.

"You don't do much healing do you?"

"No, ma'am. I'm a fighter first," Bethesda answered, a note of pride distracted in her voice. She was focused on the glowing hands which worked on the exposed side which was still a brilliant shade of bruise blue. "I'm lucky. If I'd have been born in the North Pole, they would have forced me to do this all day. And let's face it, I've got much better things to do."

"Oh, yes. That little spat of misogyny in the North. I really wonder how it is that they managed to stand against us when Zhao attacked, considering how devoted they were to being their own worst enemy," Azula muttered. Bethesda actually chuckled at that.

"Don't have to tell me twice. We just got smart and hid. I had a couple of sisters I didn't see for years because of your grandfather," Bethesda pointed out.

"And you expect me to apologize for that?"

"No, Princess Azula, I expect you to die!" she answered with a mad grin and a threatening gesture. Azula stared at her flatly, and the woman gave her a roll of the eyes. "You really need to work on your sense of humor."

"You really need to work on your delivery."

"Perhaps."

Azula sat there, looking around the room. She wasn't ashamed to admit she hadn't noticed much of it on her way back in, but Mai had very much improved the décor from when Ozai had commanded the palace. Ty Lee's panic had gotten them back to Grand Fire in a matter of hours, putting them well ahead of the fleet which by now would be exiting Azuli territory and making their way around the Bay of Tenko. For just a moment, she allowed herself a moment of wonder, what it would have been like to grow up in a palace like this. Without the overbearing architecture, the oppressive dread in the air. With laughter in the halls. She could hear Kimiko out there, somewhere. For a three year old, the girl did make a lot of noise.

"How many of the troops are back on their feet?" Azula broke the silence. She could move her arm more effectively, now, but she still felt somewhat short of breath.

"About half of them," Bethesda answered. "Which is a good thing, because I'm pretty sure I could have invaded this city with my family, my husband's family, and a dog."

"That's a lot of confidence."

"You had wounded soldiers stacked three deep in the infirmary and lining the halls in the outer palace," Bethesda countered.

"_I_ had?"

"Fine, the Fire Lord had."

Azula fell back into silence again. To say she felt alive when she was fighting was a tautology. As long as she could remember, it had always been so. Her senses became clear and crisp, her heart hammered in her breast, and she felt that unimaginable thrill. When she was dancing on that sword's edge, life took on a sharp relief. She had reveled in it. And yesterday had been no exception. Rather, it was something of a surprise that she had begun to feel that way outside of combat, sometimes. And she couldn't exactly pick out what set it in motion. Not yet, anyway. Just simple things. Like waking up and feeling that she wasn't alone. To be able to speak to people who wouldn't judge her, or live on assumptions. And the sex. Good Agni's flame, the sex. Her train of thought derailed when she realized that she already missed Ked.

"Alright, you can lower your arm," Bethesda said. Azula did as instructed. The battle had been exhilarating, but she was, after all, human. She fatigued just as easily as any earthbender, which was to say, only after a bloody long while, but it happened nonetheless.

She still felt herself glancing to the door, though. Waiting for him to return. Part of her told herself it was only so he could heal her and be done with it, and not have to muck about with these amateurs. That part was scoffed at by the rest of her. Bethesda began working on her back, which instantly provided a measure of relief, but it was not a swift process. She had to admit to herself, despite her pride, that she just wanted to know that he was alright. Preferably without anybody having known that she worried. That was the tricky part.

"So how exactly do you intend to end this?" Bethesda asked. "I mean, you've got your allies, supposedly, but they still outnumber us pretty severely. You must have something up your sleeve?"

Azula shot her a glare.

"What?" Azula raised a brow. "I'm Adamite. Your mother is essentially my god. If I betray you, I go to hell. So spill it."

"I'll... take your word on that," Azula said. It was something she was going to have to look up, later. "If things were simpler, I could just tell the Blue Flame that they were following a fraud and they would disperse, or join me. But since they wouldn't believe me, and a good number of them simply wouldn't care, I'm going to have to be a bit more cunning."

"Hmm." Bethesda muttered something else under her breath. Azula felt a brief cramp in her stomach.

"Ow, hey, pay more attention," Azula scathed. How she gave Azula a stomach cramp from behind was outside of Azula's comprehension.

"What? Oh, right. So you're going to politic the enemy to death? Well, not very exciting, but a win's a win, right?" she asked. She pulled down a wall mirror and turned it to Azula, so she could see her side and back. The bruises had faded to the faintest trace of yellow, and she could breathe again without sucking in solid pain.

"Excellent. And it only took you ten times as long as it should have," Azula said, making sure to not make her voice overly hostile. Sarcasm was something that the Whalesh appreciated.

"Next time, I'll let you wait for your doxy," Bethesda answered. "And you'll be happy to know that it's just fine."

"What is?" Azula asked, pulling her dark red blouse back into place.

"Your child."

The silence which stretched out was so pristine that Azula could actually hear her heart miss a beat.

Azula stared at the woman for a long moment. "Excuse me. My what?"

* * *

"But what about the others?" Zuko asked. "Montoya won't be pleased with what happened to his grandson."

Sokka waved him away. He still felt pins and needles in his hands and feet, but considering that Azula had zapped him clean out of blood-drunkedness, it was astounding that he didn't spend the rest of his life drooling, or worse. "Iñagoh knew the risks, and so did Monty. And besides, we don't even know that anything happened to him. For all we know, he's trekking over the mountains as we speak."

"I don't get that kind of luck, Sokka," Zuko said darkly.

"Well, with all of the bad luck I've had recently, as I see it, things ought to be looking up around here," Sokka said.

And the universe took this as the perfect opportunity to make a mockery of his statement, because a scream sounded down a hallway, and a wave of bright blue fire rolled out of the rooms ahead. The flames rolled out, grew weaker, and died just before they reached the Fire Lord and the Tribesman, who both stared at the display with expressions utterly impassive. Fire Lord Zuko turned to his companion, with a wry grin which pulled his burnt eye out of its perpetual glare.

"You make it too easy."

* * *

**Chapter 22: With Great Power...**

* * *

To say that Katara was in a much better mood than she had been several days ago would have been an understatement of the highest order. As she disembarked from the singularly massive flying fortress – since flying house obviously didn't apply to the creation slapped together quite rapidly by the Wind Nomads in Ba Sing Se – onto the grounds of the palace at Grand Fire, she honestly had no idea what kind of idiotic idea it was to stay apart for as long as she and Aang had. She would be the last to admit that it was hers, of course. Nobody liked looking the fool. She cast a glance back to the Avatar, who was following shortly behind her, a big, satisfied grin on his face. She much preferred when they were together. He kept her from _going_ too far, and she kept him from _reaching_ too far. They suited each other. And it had only taken him two and a half years when they were young to figure that out.

"It's been a long time since I was here," Aang said. "Man, it feels like just last week that we were trying to invade this WHOA!"

"Outta the way, Twinkletoes!" Toph shouted, giving the Avatar such a shove that he toppled out of the hatch and landed in a heap on the ground next to Katara. Toph, proud as a bull saber toothed moose-lion amidst its harem, stood in the now vacated threshold, her fists on her hips, a smug look on her face. "Ya smell that, Sweetness? That hint of sulphur in the air? Smells like victory to me."

"Smells like rotten eggs," Aang countered calmly, picking himself up. Katara took a whiff but couldn't smell anything.

"And besides, victory over what?"

"Ah, you're fixating on the little things," the new Earth King said with a dismissive wave of her hand. "Come on, big party at Zuko's place!"

Katara rolled her eyes, but couldn't help but be caught up in the young woman's enthusiasm. And in the course of that rolling of eyes, they fell upon something that she hadn't seen in quite a long time. Her brother.

"SOKKA!" Katara shouted, crossing the distance and tackling him with a hug which almost knocked him from his feet. "Tui La, Sokka, where have you been?"

"Just tooling around with the A-Team," Sokka said. She leaned back. There was something odd about his face, like one half wasn't quite as firm as the other. He caught her questioning look, and motioned toward it. "I'm still a bit numb on this side. It's like Ty Lee's chi blocking, but way worse."

"What is?"

"Oh, I got my brain electrified by Azula a day or so ago," Sokka said with a sort of calm that would have left Katara sputtering in confusion, had she been saying something at the time. Instead, her eyes grew wide, and her fists clenched.

"She just can't stop herself for one second, can she? She always hurts the people that I love," she was rip-snorting to go on a good, old fashioned rant, but Sokka shrugged.

"Well, I kinda deserved it," he said.

"Whoa, there, Loverboy," Toph said, slugging him in the arm as she took a place by his side. From the look of him, he didn't feel it very much, which was good, because when Toph punched you, you felt it. "You tellin' me you've hooked up with the Crazy Bitch?"

"I wouldn't call her crazy. Well, not as crazy," he said. Katara's jaw had to be picked up off the grass with a shovel.

"You... you're defending her?" Katara asked, the tone of betrayal so thick in her voice that it seeped from every word. "How could you do that? How could you betray us like that? Betray me?"

"Who's betraying who?" Toph asked, quite pointedly. "She ain't that bad, once she's not trying to kill ya'. And it turns out, you need to give her a reason for that to happen, which makes her a lot more reasonable than a lot of the people that I have to deal with on a regular basis," she stifled a cough, which sounded suspiciously like 'like you'.

"Yeah, Ty Lee and Azula and Smellerbee had some good times down in Great Whales," Sokka nodded, with a lopsided grin. "You should go there some time. Well, if you can overcome the language barrier, anyway."

"You and..." Katara shook her head, as though that would somehow shuffle the world until things started making sense again.

"What did you call them again?" Toph asked.

"The A-Team. I mean, with Aang, it's Team Avatar, the BoomerAang Gang..." he rubbed his chin for a moment, scratching at the short beard. He raised a finger in triumph. "The Gaang! See, it's got the two 'a's in it!"

"Sokka?" Aang asked.

"What? Right. So me and the A-Team... well, we've got lots of time for story-telling, and we probably shouldn't do it out here. They're _actually_ calling for rain this afternoon, so..."

"You're welcome," Toph said indulgently as she strutted past. A glance to the horizon showed that Wind Nomads were, indeed, herding thunderheads toward the city. Usually, bringing rain to a city was an act of maleficence. In the South, if rain fell, it tended to freeze the instant it landed, coating everything it touched in a mass of ice, which could crush roofs and trap entire villages indoors for days. But here, this dry and parched place, every drop of rain was a gift. She could understand that well enough. To this day, she still had no intention whatsoever to return to Si Wong, where she had learned that lesson quite thoroughly.

Sokka's gait wasn't as uneven as his face, so he brought them inside, leaving Toph behind briefly to shout a few more orders at her servants, before catching up in the grand entry hall of the palace. The décor in this portion of the palace had been left intact. Black floors of obsidian were polished so much that they shone like a black mirror. The pillars, covered in gilt and bright scarlet lacquer bridged the vast distance to the arching roof, its underside painted with the representations of the earliest days of the Fire Nation. This part of the palace, it was said, had been transported whole from the old site in Azul to here more than a century ago. It was broad, it was open, and it was uninhabited.

Strike that, almost uninhabited.

"She's missing an eyebrow," Mai's voice sounded from a hallway that opened into that vast atrium. It didn't sound quite as it usually did. Yes, it was flat and cool, but there was a measure of caution in it that was quite unlike the Fire Lady.

"I'll be the first to admit that I overreacted. That is... not news that I expected to hear."

The voice which answered Mai's statement made Katara's blood boil. Her hand began to drift toward her flask, but before it reached it, Sokka's hand clamped over her own, and he shook his head. What the hell was he doing? When she gave him a glare, she found that his own had eclipsed hers. Her anger was snuffed out by a look of such utter warning that for an instant, she actually felt like a younger sister.

"Still, we're going to have to repaint that entire hallway."

"If you're trying to make me feel like an idiot, you can save your breath," Azula's voice was obviously not amused. "I already question my own faculties to end up like this."

"You could have taken steps..."

"What steps?" the woman asked, as the two of them came into view. Mai was easy enough to recognize, but the woman next to her... wasn't what Katara was expecting. Gone was her intimidating hairdo, gone, her crisp and threatening attire. Gone, even, was her lacerating gaze, now contained in a prison of spectacle glass. But it didn't stop Katara from harboring her dark thoughts. "Who was supposed to tell me that there was a way to avoid this? Ozai? You?"

"You could have asked Ked about..." Mai trailed off when she crossed the threshold and noticed everybody. "Hrm. You're ahead of schedule," she pointed out.

"And you've got a psychotic killer as a guest. Are we done pointing out the obvious?" Katara asked.

"Katara!" Sokka snapped.

"What? She is!"

"Ah, yes, the water peasant," Azula's voice returned to a cadence that Katara was much more familiar with. A smirk came to her face which erased any distinction between the woman standing there and the woman Katara had come within a hairsbreadth of having to put down like a mad hound during the days of Sozin's Comet. "Are you still sore about that little scuffle we had in Ba Sing Se? Or is this some other half-imagined slight on your delicate sensibilities?"

"I'll show you delicate!" Katara took a step forward, only to find herself restrained by both her older brother and her husband.

"Katara, calm down!" Aang whispered harshly, but he, too, was giving dark glances toward the firebender at the other end of the hall.

"Boy, you really can't help but push her buttons, can you?" Toph asked, a smirk on her face.

"Of course not. It's entirely too much fun," Azula admitted, that smirk on her face changing in its aspect. The firebender took a few steps forward, and straightened the glasses on her face. "So. If I'm not mistaken, that's the regalia of the Earth King. Have you gone and gotten yourself crowned since our last little tiff?"

"Damn right I have," Toph said with a fair degree of pride.

"How long did it take you?" Azula asked.

"About a month," Toph said. Katara smiled at that. It was just like the little blind earthbender to take on a task of that monumental difficulty and succeed in so short a time as to be utterly unbelievable. But the expression that came to Azula's face was rife with entirely too much sarcasm.

"A month, you say?" Azula asked. Toph nodded. "How delightfully amateurish. I managed that same task in three days."

Toph didn't rise to the bait. "Yeah, but you see; on the morning of the _sixth_ day, I was _still_ Earth King."

"Are you impugning my monarchial stamina?" Azula asked.

"Nah, just claiming that you're too incompetent to hold any throne not vacated by somebody even more incompetent than you," Toph answered with a smile, broad, dry, and dangerous. Oddly, Azula started to grin at that as well, and both of them shared a nod.

The two of them moved with perfect simultaneity, sprinting toward each other across that gulf, before emitting simultaneous grunts of angry effort. The firebender lashed out with a blast of light blue flames, which Toph's rippling wave of earth battered away, before smashing up at Azula. Azula took the footing it offered to bound into the sky, cutting a broad arc of flame toward the blind Earth King. Katara once again strained against her brother, but Aang's grip had loosened, as he was obviously in much more shock watching this than even... Wait, why did Mai look bored?

Toph rose up on a column of black stone, which was cut from under her. She twisted in her footing, sending discs of sharp stone toward the still-airborne firebender. Azula responded by detonating them in mid-air, somehow, before rolling forward on the ground. Toph, though, seemed to gain the initiative, and began to press in on Azula, until the firebender took exactly one step backward, then rose her hands. The fight, as psychotically sudden as it was to begin, was equally sudden in ending.

"What, you give that easily?" Toph asked, letting the blunt spear of stone she was bending drop back into the floor. With a couple of minor gestures, she returned the atrium to its previous state, as though nothing had happened. "I mean, last time you threw yourself at me a lot harder than that. You feelin' alright?"

"Can I not simply concede for the moment so I don't destroy my front room?" Azula asked.

"Would you care?"

"Of course I would," Azula said, her hands falling, but a smirk coming to her face. Oh, she had to be lying.

"Hmmm. I guess I'll buy that," Toph said.

"What... was that?" Aang asked, giving voice to the question which was desperately calling for release into the room.

"Rematch," both Azula and Toph said as one. Toph's grin grew wider. "Told ya I'd get you back for that one. Didn't I tell ya?"

"Why is Toph friends with Azula?" Katara asked, not able to parse this in her mind. Her reality simply couldn't contend with both her brother, and steadfast, unwavering Toph playing nice with the mad firebender who tried to kill... Wait. Why was Mai not trying to kill her? WHAT THE HELL WAS GOING ON?

"Are you alright?" Aang asked, real concern in his voice.

The unreality of the situation all slammed home at once, and Katara took what was admittedly the coward's way out. Her eyes rolled back into her head, and she fainted dead away onto the floor.

* * *

Yui had such simple desires in her life. She wanted to be famous, but of course, any actor would. She wanted to be acclaimed, to have her name in lights. But she wasn't just her profession. She also wanted family. She was the only daughter of a family of six, so she grew up thinking that motherhood would be the absolute last thing she did before she died, but when the years started to mount, as her thirtieth birthday began to approach, that seemed less some distant fancy and more a driving preoccupation. At least, for her sake, she looked younger than she was. In a way, being constantly mistaken for the yet twenty-three year old Fire Lord was flattering.

Fame, wealth, and family. Sure, for some, to want all of that would have been asking the moon and the skies, but she was Fire Nation, and Nationals always strove for more than they could easily reach. It was why they had rose to the forefront, even after they stood on the edge of oblivion after the Great Shift. Nationals, as it was commonly said, were driven. There was a reason why the kinds of people in the military ended up there; it was their ideal environment. But the same could be said of any job in the West. It was hound-eat-hound and everybody had to be aware of the possibility of a knife appearing in one's back. Yui had planted her fair share to rise to the top of the Ember Island Players. It wasn't something she was ashamed of. She was better, and that meant the worse had to get shuffled out.

She examined herself in the mirror, particularly the skin which usually hid under her clothes. It was actually becoming more pale. Not surprising; she hadn't seen the sun in more than a month, save the few minutes a week she was on the balcony delivering speeches. She would have preferred to laze out there, in the warmth. Sunbathing was a favorite pass-time. Instead, she was looking more and more like the woman she was now saddled with impersonating, and with less and less effort. This was hardly the role she had been hoping for. Yes, she was famous, she was wealthy, but she wasn't herself. She was Azula, Fire Lord Azula, not Yui.

With a mildly discontent sigh, she began to pin her hair back up into Azula's favored hairstyle. There were much more flattering styles out there. It was unpleasant that the Princess had only favored the one, to the exclusion of all others. She would have desperately loved to cut those stupid bangs. They kept getting in her mouth when she was eating. She looked up, and there was somebody standing directly behind her.

Yui let out a shriek, spinning from her vanity and almost unconsciously dropping into a firebending form. Chan, it turned out, was a much better firebender than she, so he was showing her a few things during those times when they weren't doing... other things. The man in the room was short, almost as tall as she but not quite. His eyes were a very bright green, and the way he stood, hands clasped together, made it seem like he was used to folding his hands in his sleeves, even if his current outfit denied him that. Chan called them 'Dai Li'. They scared the living hell out of Yui.

"Long Feng wishes you to read this," he said awkwardly. He produced a scroll and set it on a short table near the door. Then, without another word, either questioning or accusing or even merely curious, he turned and left, as silently as he had appeared. If there was one good thing about the Dai Li, as Chan said, it was that they were fairly thick. They didn't tend to think outside of their orders. What made them dangerous, conversely, was how dogged they were in pursuing those orders.

It was more than lucky that they didn't suspect what she and Chan had been planning. If they had, it would have guaranteed a swift, horrible death for him, and a long, horrible one for her. Perhaps it was her biological clock ticking, but the idea of a child in pain set off something in Yui that she could not deny. Nobody deserved to be treated like that. Not even an Easterner, she pondered, trying to push her diminished sense of racism aside. It was hard. Her parents were... Well, there was a reason she didn't talk to them.

She waited a good long moment after the Dai Li agent vanished from the room to move. And even when she did, her eyes flit to all corners and portals, as though at least one more was hiding in ambush. It was futile of course; they were earthbenders, and the palace was made of stone. If they wanted to get at her, they would. But still, it made her feel minutely better when her cursory scan revealed nobody.

"Alright, let's see what garbage they want Azula to say now," Yui muttered to herself, her voice unconsciously taking the sing-song quality which she had been trained into. She broke the seal with a claw-like thumbnail. Yet another compromise she made. The scroll flapped down, and she began to skim along its contents. "People of Ember, we have struck a mighty blow against the Pretender," she began, rolling her eyes hard at the prose. Agni's blood, Puon Tim wrote better than this when he was making half-assed satire. She knew. She'd had a starring role in it.

Yui tightened the robe around her, and sat herself at the foot of the bed. With a shake of her head, she continued. "But we must press harder. Even now, he stands poised to rally and destroy everything that you have worked for. So we must strike at their... heart," she began to slow down. "We will bu... burn Azul to the ground?"

Her eyes shot down the page, taking in the rest of the message. It was a patriotic sugar-coating over genocide. And they expected her to deliver this with a fist raised in patriotism and a proud smirk on her face? Just looking at this, the words staring back at her, made her feel at least a little bit sick. She was on her feet before she realized it, throwing what little she really cared to keep into a bag, which would have easily fit inside the smallest pocket of her usual traveling bag, and almost sprinted from the room. The instant she cleared the threshold, though, her back went straight, her posture exaggerated almost to the point of parody. She glared down her nose at everybody who came within three paces of her. Those that did, did not remain so for very long. Which was good, because for all she looked like at thunderhead ready to drop lightning, she was terrified out of her wits. She just wanted to get to him. He would make her safe.

"Fire Lord Azula, I was not aware you would be about," the head of the scullery maids said. Azula affixed her with a glare. "Is there anything you were looking for?"

"You, out of my way," she demanded dangerously. She hoped that it didn't show on her eyes, but she hated doing this. She wasn't good at ordering people around. Every time she did, she always expected somebody to just shake his head and say, 'you aren't real, and I don't have to listen to you'. That it never happened only made it worse, somehow. The maid let out a peep of fear and backed off. And once again, there was an emotion which Yui hoped didn't show on her face; regret. Much as she was bad at ordering people around, she also disliked doing it. Who was she? Just some actress from Lesser Ember. Certainly nobody important.

The maid behind her, she almost let out a shaky sigh, but kept it bottled up. She continued to stomp angrily, to all eyes unable to see her inner thoughts, through the Yuchiban Palace. At a spot where there was nobody present, though, she ducked into a side passage, and began to navigate the servants' paths, a warren of narrow halls which ran through the guts of this building. Not surprising: it had once been the most glamorous of the Royal Palaces, before Grand Fire supplanted it, and Yuchiban fell into disrepair. And a chief tenet of glamor, was never having to see the help.

The path became dustier as she went, until she had to walk with her steps inside the larger outlines of bootprints in that dust. That way, she left no indication she was here. Not something Chan told her, but proper paranoia dictated it prudent. So much so, that when she reached the little room, tucked deep in the superstructure of the Palace, that there wasn't so much as a trace of her passing. The thought gave her something of an inward chuckle, that all of this politicking was turning her into some sort of Azuli. The chuckle did not last long.

She pushed the door open, and when she did, she was immediately grabbed by the collar and slammed against a wall, a big fist pulled back. But then, Chan saw that she was, in fact, her. Then, confusion came to his face. "What are you doing here, Yui? You're not supposed to come here, not until we..."

"We have to go now," Yui blurted out. Chan shook his head.

"We both agreed on the plan. If we do it now..."

"Then I won't have to say this," she said, handing over the proclamation. He read it, blanched then reread it. He looked up to her, a stunned expression on his face.

"This is... What the hell are they thinking?" Chan asked, slumping onto the stool which sat against one of the walls in the tiny room. "I mean, exterminating the population... Wait. This isn't just the city. They're going to wipe out the entire country!"

"I know. I can't say this. I can't be the person who... puts those words into the air. I won't be the Butcher of Azul."

Chan glanced up at her. "This is going to happen whether you say it or not."

"But I can't say it. I just can't," she said, her voice finally giving way to sobs. She wasn't a monster. She couldn't be that heartless, that ruthless. She was just an actress from Lesser Ember. A nobody. Why did all of this have to happen to her? Chan quickly pulled her close, rubbing her back with his big, strong hands.

"Hey, it's going to be alright," Chan said. He let out a sigh. "Even if it means we have to leave before sunset."

"Really?" Yui said around a sob. "But what about the plan?"

"Plans are made to be broken," Chan said off-handedly. "Besides, we both knew this was going to go wrong somehow. Now we know how. All we have to do at this point is figure out some way of making it work anyway."

Yui nodded against his shoulder. Fame, wealth, glory. How much she'd give up for safety, for sanity, right now.

* * *

Dark gold eyes flashed as he surveyed the conspiracy before him. Jeong Jeong was not amused. But that was akin to saying that water was wet, fire was hot, and the royal family were a bunch of idiots. He stared down his counterpart, who for all the world was as serene as a pond sheltered from all wind and disturbance. But Jeong Jeong knew that there were things happening in the unseen depths of the pool which was Long Feng, and he would know their measure. Because when the time came to kill the Easterner, there would be no room for error.

"Would you mind explaining to me how it is that you've lost the entire House Azul?" Jeong Jeong demanded.

"There was a miscalculation," Long Feng said smoothly.

"Miscalculation? It sounded like a complete fuck-up," Mongke countered, not bothering to temper himself in the slightest. And Jeong Jeong had no desire to curtail it either. Let the man be humiliated by having his efforts dismissed as worthless by the small. It amused the Firemaster to no small degree, having a definitive failure that he could pin on Long Feng and nobody else.

"The ineptitude of the army could be laid on poor management," Long Feng said. "Was it not Admiral Chan who was in charge of the occupation?"

"Don't sell Chan up the river you little shit," Mongke continued, but a flick of Jeong Jeong's hand called him to heel.

"Indeed. We know of the involvement of your man. We know that he preempted the chain of command," Jeong Jeong pointed out. His eyes narrowed, tugging at the parallel scars which ran down the side of his face. "That sounds dangerously close to dereliction of duty. Which I would charge him for in an instant, if I was not sure you could make him disappear from this army in a heartbeat."

"If that were the case, then you would find how long your armies last without the mercenaries and my select friends and acquaintances to sturdy them," Long Feng threatened, but without so much as a twitch to his voice.

"I do not like to be threatened, Long Feng."

"And I do not like when incompetence ruins my plans, as you don't," Long Feng admitted. "So we should put this aside and set our gaze on tomorrow, rather than dwell in the past."

That would be a new trick for the both of them.

"Indeed," Jeong Jeong muttered. Forty years. He would not let forty years gnawing at the roots of this black-hearted family be for nothing. It was an old and festering hatred, one which had consumed him in revenge long ago. And now, when it was so close, it gripped him with a fevered verve. He would see the end of this, or his death. And despite his advanced age, he doubted it would be the latter. "I understand that you have enacted something called 'Plan E'."

If Long Feng was surprised at the breadth of Jeong Jeong's knowledge, he did not show it.

"And if I have?" the Easterner asked.

"For once, it is something that we can agree upon," Jeong Jeong said. "However, I will be sending my agent to undertake it. Mongke," the large man nodded, "will be in charge of bringing the Azuli airships out of mothball and preparing for the firebombing. I will not allow this to fall to incompetence, no matter whose it may be."

"If you really see the need. Don't spend your soldier's lives too freely. While we may have more than they, remember the cost that they accrue."

Jeong Jeong shot the Easterner a glare and turned, his brute following behind. In truth, he didn't care about the cost. This wasn't about cost or power or even rule. "I've gotta say, you actually agreeing with one of his plans has me a bit confused," Mongke admitted.

"It works to my ends. By ordering the firebombing of Azul, it both destroys Zuko's delicate, soft heart, and paints Azula as history's greatest villain. I will believe that woman dead when I am shown her corpse and not before. Besides, they are already willing to believe her a monster. Now they will have a reason to."

"Man, what did they do to piss you off that much?" Mongke asked.

"You couldn't understand. You lack the years and intellect."

"I don't appreciate being patronized," Mongke muttered.

"I'm surprised you even know the meaning of the word," Jeong Jeong countered. "Now, you have a job to do. Get the airships working. Burn Azul to the ground. The rest will be in my hands."

"Where will you be?"

"Where else?" Jeong Jeong asked. "I'll be in Azul, making sure that _everybody_ dies."

* * *

Long Feng managed not to show the rage on his face. Not when he got the news from his Secretariat, and not when he had his confrontation with the National. Long Feng's rage was, like everything in his life, cold. Controlled. Useful. He set down a cup of tea and stared at the report he'd gotten once more.

Han had outstepped himself. He had shown his hand, whether he realized it or not. Long Feng had no reason to see Azul burn. Quite the opposite. Having the greatest manufacturing center in the world intact and working would have benefited him greatly. His initial plan had fallen through when that upstart Beifong managed to snatch the Earth Crown from his palm, leaving his agent in the East to twist in the metaphorical wind. Finding himself without a foothold in Ba Sing Se severely limited his options, but it also narrowed his focus. He would rule here, standing behind the false-Azula, and garner the support needed to free Ba Sing Se from Beifong's clutches.

It would be his city again.

And all he had to do to get it was conquer the world. Long Feng pulled out another map and set it before him. It had no markings on it, save for those which were present when it was printed, but his finger unerringly went to a spot on the north shores, inside the Gates of Azulon. The time was swiftly coming when having both Jeong Jeong and Fire Lord Zuko alive would be a liability. Long Feng did not suffer liabilities. A lightning strike, and an army forgets to heed a single order. Both problems cut away in a single instant.

A small smirk came to the Grand Secretariat's face. In fact, he had just the man to lead that fifth column. A man who's perfidious nature was painfully obvious. He reached for a pen, and began to scratch the orders. "Perhaps, if fortune favors me," Long Feng said to nobody, "then Han Hua will be dealt with as well."

* * *

Iroh let out a self-satisfied sigh, stretching out in the hot bath. He let his eyes close, breathing deep the air of home. It had been rather a while since he returned to the city which once would have been his to rule. Still, he was glad that he hadn't been saddled with that responsibility. However good Iroh was as politicking and such, he did not enjoy it. In fact, it made him into a kind of person that he really did not like to be. A person that, if he were completely honest, made him a little bit concerned. But the issue of what monster he might have been in a hypothetical world where he had become Fire Lord was of no concern his.

No, his concerns were drinking his tea, and enjoying his bath.

At least, it was, until he felt a knife's edge pressing on his cheek. One eye lazily opened, and he beheld a thundercloud in human form. Well, that was perhaps being a bit poetic, but with the expression on Ursa's face, it seemed quite likely that she was going to, despite showing no aptitude for it before, begin hurling lightning about with wild abandon. "I thought we agreed that we would no longer meet in the baths?" Iroh said coyly.

Ursa was not amused. "You lied to me."

"I have lied to many people over the years. I have told the truth to many more. You will have to be more specific."

Ursa glared. "The curse. It was an utter fabrication, wasn't it?"

Iroh sighed. "Yes, it was."

"Why?" she demanded.

"You took my son away from me. I felt it was fair you felt the same thing," Iroh answered, his voice growing hard.

"It was the Earth King's lackeys who killed your child, not me."

Iroh scowled. "We both know who's plan it was to make Lu Ten into Ozai's agent, his path to the throne after I died. It was his act of heroism, saving my life, which threw that plan onto the fire. You told my brother to turn Lu Ten. You are responsible for everything which led to my son's death."

"Then you hold a very vague definition of the word responsible, and I don't give a shit about that," Ursa answered. "Six years. I could have talked to him six years ago. I could have let him know that I was alright, that I still loved him and that I was proud of him. But instead, you let me rot in some rain-soaked backwater for half a decade."

"And how is that worse?" Iroh demanded, not shifting from his place against the tub. It was very comfortable, despite the distinct possibility of losing an eye. "Lu Ten is gone forever. I can never see my child again. But now, you can. Maybe I wanted you to feel what I have felt. Maybe I wanted you to understand the pain that I have lived with."

"You are a cruel man, Iroh."

"And so are you, Ursa. You cost me my son with your avarice. I felt that you deserved to feel the same thing I did," Iroh answered. He stared at her. "The only difference was, your son is still alive, and mine isn't. Consider it the punishment you earned working with my brother. Now take the knife away. We both know you're not going to do anything with it. Sit. Have tea."

The look on her face could have just as easily belonged on Azula. There was no mystery to her heritage, whatsoever. But the same things which worked up also worked down. Ursa pulled back, slipping the blade back into its sheath, tucked into a broad belt holding her dress cinched. "They both turned out pretty well, eh?" Iroh asked. Ursa let out a sigh, poured herself a cup from one of the three extra provided on the platter. He hadn't been sure what the server was thinking sending an entire set when he was going to be having tea alone, but now, it served a purpose.

"Yes," Ursa said, her voice going just a little bit wistful. "They both did. I have never been so proud."

"I can well imagine," Iroh said. "Somehow, it turned out alright."

* * *

"I could ask you what you're doing here," Zuko said, sitting on the now inaptly named Burning Throne, looking down at... well, not down at, because she'd been perched in a palanquin, but across at, certainly... his once-companion, once cohort, and now, counterpart ruler. "As I understand it, there's just as much chaos in the East as there is here."

"Yeah, but the big difference is that I've got mine bottled up, whereas yours is about to blow up in your face," Toph said, idly picking at the feet which she had crossed underneath her. It was a bad habit that even royalty would do nothing to displace, it seemed. Still, it brought a grin to Zuko's face to know that, unlike so many other things in his life, Toph would always be Toph. Mai, awake in the evening despite her usual tendency to turn in early, raised a brow.

"Be that as it may, it doesn't do your reign any good if they think you're going to run off on extravagant and costly voyages around the world at the drop of a hat," Mai pointed out.

"I ain't denying that," Toph admitted. It was strange, the thought that he was now supposed to address _her_ as 'your majesty'. But since she extended nothing of that same courtesy, Zuko had valid reason not to reciprocate. It was just a lot more comfortable. "Truth told, I do have a pretty important reason to be here. And I think you're gonna love it."

"Oh?" Mai asked.

"Yeah. Remember how Burning Rock flipped you the finger and fucked off for the East a month ago?"

"Distinctly," Zuko said grimly.

"Yeah, well, now they're under my control unofficially, because they're still 'Fire Nation Territory' until the end of this year," she said. She gave a nod toward the grey-eyed fellow next to her. "Azdi here brought a big ol' chunk of the Republic City's militia with him when he sailed east."

Zuko let out a grunt of surprise. Mai also shared that appraising look, giving Zuko a nod. She understood as he did, how politically astute that move was. Even though Burning Rock had never been too much of a Fire Nation protectorate, it was still Western enough to produce Firebenders, and that made it Western enough to be Fire Nation in the eyes of most. Having them meant that they could accept outside aid, without it really being outside aid, because as far as anybody cared, Burning Rock was still Fire Nation in all things but name.

"I didn't expect that level of savvy from you," Mai said honestly. Toph let out a clipped laugh.

"I'm gettin' a lot of help," she admitted. She gave a glance to one side and grunted in irritation. "If y'all aren't going to put any effort into this, you might as well put me down."

The bearers lowered the palanquin to the ground, and she quickly bounded out of it, leaning against its frame in a fashion absolutely not befitting a woman who was in charge, nominally, of the greatest landmass on the planet.

"So is that it? Just delivering the soldiers to our doorstep? That is the job of an embassador, not the Earth King herself," Mai pointed out. Her eyes flicked to the door of the room, and Zuko could see his sister there, but she didn't look right. Oddly pale, and she retreated quickly.

"Yeah, and that means finding somebody that I can trust not to twist it to suit him. I've figured out why every Earth King since Kyoshi had the Dai Li. There are a lot of people trying to take advantage of this sweet, innocent little lady. You'd be surprised how many people want bad things to happen to me," she said, rife with sarcasm and a smirk on her face. Zuko glanced to Mai, about to ask something, but she wasn't beside him anymore. Much as there were far more skilled Azuli than she, the way she could vanish from sight in an instant sometimes struck him as distinctly spooky. He spotted her again at the doorway, leaving on Azula's trail.

"Well, you're going to have to figure that out on your own. I doubt the Dai Li would serve you."

"Hell, I don't want 'em. They've already proven that their loyalty is to their master and not the crown. I don't want anybody like that working for me," Toph said. She frowned for a moment, then looked from Azdi to somebody who approached from a side entrance. Not gliding in silently with a smug look on his face, unlike every other encounter Zuko had with the man, Hotama Azdi was striding forward with a look of wrath. Ouzen, though, obviously didn't understand that, or else was bloody well blind.

"Hotama? Is that you? Agni's blood, but it's been ages! How's your wife?" Ouzen asked.

Hotama Azdi answered him by punching him in the face so hard that a tooth flew out.

Azdi, the conscious one, anyway, shook his hand with a pained groan. "She has nothing to say to you," he answered. The other generals and politicians were beginning to mutter and murmur to themselves at the display.

Zuko gaped for a moment, before getting a handle on himself. "What is the meaning of this?"

"He owed me a tooth. I've now collected," Azdi said. He leaned down. "And he should be bloody grateful that that's all I'm going to collect. Goddamned traitor," he said, pushing the moaning, semi-conscious man over with a boot.

"Wait, isn't he...?"

"My brother?" Azdi prompted. "That's debatable. I've gotten some news from Azul. It's not good."

"What?" Zuko asked, weariness entering his voice.

"Do you remember what your predecessor had planned for most of the world?"

"How could anybody forget?" Zuko asked.

"Well, the Blue Flame is planning to do that to Azul," Azdi pulled out a scroll from his pockets and hurled it up to Zuko. "These are copies of intercepted documents that had been circulated to the brass occupying Azul. The only luck we have is that they're depending on airships which we've sabotaged before the House was forced out of the city. That gives us a few days. But they still outnumber us, and when they do get those ships in the air..."

Zuko growled. "I understand the implications perfectly!" he said. Some of the people took a step back from the long table which he sat over the head of, with the Earth King at its foot. There wasn't anything he could do. And it was tearing him apart.

"Zuko," his wife's voice was quiet at his side. He managed not to give a start at her sudden reappearance, if only because he knew her so well. "You remember those generals, admirals and officials you hate so much?"

"Yeah?" he said, but it came out a question. Albeit a quiet one which didn't travel to the foot of the dais, let alone to the crowd below.

"You now have a very valid reason to kill them," Mai said, her tone... tight. Like she was trying very, very hard not to be very, very angry. "Most of them anyway."

"Why?"

"Azula told me exactly what Ozai did. And he wasn't alone," she said. A plan started to form in Zuko's mind. It was a bad plan. It was almost an evil plan. But that part of him which was clearly marked 'protective older brother' would not allow any other. It demanded. It would not be denied. And another part, marked 'deeply cynical', realized that he might well be able to deal with two problems at once.

"Gods, who pissed in your jook?" Toph asked. But Zuko was not amused.

"Clear the room," Zuko ordered. Those nobles he had control over began to file out, and Zuko's eyes locked on the blind earthbender. When the last one had vanished from the hall, Zuko got off of the throne and descended to the table. "It'd be easier if you could see this, but since you can't, you're just going to have to keep up. Some evil men are going to die, something long overdue. And when the do, we get an opening. I just hope we're in a position to capitalize on it."

* * *

Chan furiously spun the lock to the vault, casting a glance to his charge. Yui's eyes were flitting up and down the hall in a steady panic. Chan couldn't blame her. He was on the ragged edge as well, and he had the added composure of being both a military brat and something of a military veteran on top of it, while she was just an actress. A hell of a courageous actress, being able to keep her composure all this time, for certain. But still, in a perfect world, she wouldn't be anywhere near this kind of danger.

"Alright. Are you sure you have everything? Because after this, we don't stop until we're out of here," Chan asked.

"Food, money, umm... Yeah, I think we've got everything."

To her benefit, Yui was looking un-Azula-ish right now. Different style of hair and makeup, and most notably, an absence of lipstick. She could well be a completely different person. Part of Chan wasn't sure if he liked her better before, but that was a perverted little part of himself that he would have to explore at a more convenient moment, such as not when he's breaking a mentally damaged, possibly dangerous child out of slavery.

The lock's catch rattled into its proper alignment, and the door began to swing outward. Inside the vault, as always, it was pristinely dark. He took a step inside. "Trama, if you wanted to leave, now's the time. This is our only chance," he said. Or at least, he said something which was like that, in the kid's own language. There was a shuffling sound in the darkness. "Yeah, I know, it's scary as hell, but this is probably your only chance. I'm going to turn on the light, alright?"

"Chan, what's taking so long?" Yui asked, stepping in beside him. She ignited a flame over her palm, as Chan had a moment before. Since he was glancing to her, the first sign he got that something was wrong was the way she blanched, the way she shrank in on herself. When he turned his gaze to the direction that she had been facing, he could see why. Sitting at the dark end of the vault, flanking the thoroughly chained form of the child Trama, were a pair of parchment complected, green eyed men. They could have been brothers for their similarity, and both of them had the calm, impassive face of a magistrate about to hand down a death sentence to somebody they had never met.

"Did you really think your little games were going unnoticed?" one of them asked.

"We have been watching you without fail since you arrived in Yuchiban. You are an enemy of the Dai Li. You will surrender and be taken into custody, and the fraud will be put into much stricter control," the other said.

No.

No, it was not going to end like this.

"And what if I don't surrender?" Chan asked, his voice dropping an octave.

"Then you will be taken into custody by force," the first answered, sliding his hands out of his sleeves. "It will be painful, damaging, possibly debilitating, and I promise you, the terms of your imprisonment will not be kind."

Chan scoffed. "Oh, please. You're just going to have me dragged into a corner and killed anyway. Drop the pretense."

"Surrender."

"Go fuck yourself," Chan answered, crossing his thick arms over his chest. A smirk came to his face. "I don't know where you get off telling me to roll over. Do you really think it'll be that easy to take me down? Face it, dingbats, you ain't shit."

"He is resisting arrest."

"So we do this the hard way," the two said.

Chan's arms opened wide. "Come at me, bros!"

They moved as Chan predicted they would. It was odd to claim that he could predict their movements, but he'd seen them skulking about in the halls, and the way they moved when they tried to kill he and Ked months ago. So when they fanned out, Chan did not wait. He launched into the attack.

In a way, it was very much in keeping with the firebending philosophy. The only worthwhile defense is overwhelming offense. Firebenders were not renowned for their stamina, whereas earthbenders were. So the best way to beat them was to pound them down as fast as possible. Which was why Chan rushed the short distance and tackled one of them into the iron side of the vault, before pushing back just a bit and driving a headbutt into the Dai Li's chest. The man exhaled involuntarily, winding himself, while Chan twisted and sent out a lash of fire at the other. He ducked, and came up with a fist of stone, which launched into Chan's undefended back. To say it hurt was an understatement. He was fairly sure he heard a crunch somewhere back there, but he had to keep the pressure up.

Chan slammed an elbow into the face of the one he had pinned, then once more, breaking the nose and making his eyes roll like marbles on an uneven floor. Dividing his attention was not good. He was a decent firebender, but no more. The other was flanking him, and he couldn't keep up with both, not like this. If he had some room, some weapons, some backup...

Which did come, in a fashion. A flare of fire shot at the man, who punched through it with a stone encased hand. Yui let out a squeak, seeing her attack dispelled with such ease. The Dai Li should have smirked. If there had been any justice or rightness in the world, he would have, but instead, he just turned his focus to the actress with the same anti-passion that he showed every moment before now, and likely would until the moment he died.

There was a prick at Chan's chest, and a glance down showed that the Dai Li under his fists had worked his glove into a sharp edge, and was fumbling, trying to eviscerate him. Chan answered that attempt by kneeing the Dai Li twice, once in the genitals, and again in the diaphragm. Had to hand it to those bastards, Dai Li had a level of toughness to them.

A level which Chan distinctly abhorred. A glance over his shoulder showed that Yui was flattened up against the door, her eyes wide as saucers, furiously bending with what little power and skill she had trying to force the other one back. He finally reached through the barrage and snagged her by the hair. That was when she truly panicked, and let out a scream. A scream which lit with flame. It blasted the undefended face of the Dai Li, not with such heat as to vaporise, not even close. But certainly hot enough to stun and set his hair on fire. He dropped to his knees, letting out a loud grunt of pain. Yui's next move brought a bit of sunshine to Chan's heart, that she had paid attention. She kicked him very hard in the ribs, causing him to flop into the threshold of the vault, before hauling on the massive doors, catching the Dai Li's head between an irresistible force and an immovable object.

Chan looked down at the Dai Li under his hands.

"You see, there's a big difference between you morons and me," Chan said. "I'm a veteran soldier. You're just a bunch of glorified thieves and kidnappers, with delusions of importance. And I'm done dancing to your tune."

Chan punctuated the last words with a blast of fire from his fist, ending the Dai Li. Darkness returned to the vault. He illuminated it again, and saw that Trama was sitting still, his body very limp, only the rise and fall of his chest showing that he was even alive. Chan peeled back an eyelid. His pupils were wide as dinner plates. They had him drugged, so he wouldn't get in the way.

"Are you alright?" Chan said, turning to Yui.

"Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god," she repeated to herself, her eyes wide and her hands still clutched on the handle of the bulkhead. "Chan... I just killed somebody. I killed somebody Chan! I... Oh my god..."

"It's going to be alright," Chan said, moving to her side and giving her the embrace that he was fairly sure she desperately needed. She was not a killer, nor a soldier, nor even a fighter.

"I can't believe I did that," she muttered into his chest. "I didn't even think..."

"It's alright. But you've got to focus. We need to get Trama and get out. These two are going to be missed."

"Yeah, alright," she said, but she was so pale that she could have passed for an Azuli noble, and shaking constantly. "What's wrong with Trama?"

"He's drugged. That actually works in our favor," Chan said. He reached into his bag and pulled out a thick blanket that he had thought he'd need, and threw it aside. "This isn't going to be big on dignity, little buddy," he muttered, then carefully stuffed the youth into the bag. He gave a glance to Yui. "I really hope he doesn't come to until we're outside Grand Fire."

"Less hoping more running!" Yui stressed.

* * *

Azula was somewhat stressed.

No, that was beyond understatement. Her first reaction had been to blow up a portion of the palace. The only mitigating factor of that little... outburst... was that Bethesda had gotten clear before Azula did. Well, mostly clear. So when she heard that the ships had come into the harbor, that House Azul had arrived in Grand Fire, her heart was in her throat, as the expression went. It wasn't really, it was right where it should be, behind her ribs, but there was a sort of panicked expectation that she could easily see as fitting the outline of the idiom.

Azula was combing her hair, an activity which gave her a measure of control, if not calm. She had no idea what she was going to say, or do. She never went into anything in life with no plan. Sometimes it was just the barest outline of a plan, but right now, she felt like there was no ground to stand on. Considering that meant that she was in the water, it was not good. Azula hated water. The door opened behind her, and Azula felt just a pang of fear and hope, a very strange combination to hold at the same time. It was left in a lurch when she saw who it was.

"Avatar," she said, not rising. "I see you brought your woman with you. Why are you here?"

"I... just want to see for myself," the Avatar said.

"I just want to know what you're planning," his woman answered, her tones hot and suspicious.

"Planning?" Azula asked.

"Of course, you're planning something," the woman now seemed to be going off on a tangent. Azula took a long moment to figure out what her name was. It didn't come. Hmm. All this time, and she had never even bothered to learn the waterbender's name. There was a click in her head, a conversation she'd had months ago, in the South Pole. Katara. Right. "You're always plotting, always scheming. You learned that Zuko felt some pangs of conscience and you came here to exploit it, didn't you?"

"Katara, what are you saying?" the Avatar seemed a bit dismayed – if not outright disturbed – by his woman's behavior.

"You don't keep up with news, do you?" Azula asked with forced distance. In truth, she wanted very badly to slap that woman. But it wouldn't do her any good to let the two know that. "Politically, monetarily, I stand to gain nothing being here. In truth, I could do much better on those fronts if I was still working with Jeong Jeong and Long Feng in the Blue Flame."

"So why are you here?" Katara asked, jabbing a finger toward her. "And don't you dare lie to me."

"I will lie if I please," Azula responded, finally allowing something genuine show through, even if it was peevishness. "I am here because I made a promise to my mother, a very long time ago, to protect Zuzu. Since I couldn't do it then, I'm doing it now."

"So what? Over the last six years, you suddenly grew a conscience?" Katara asked.

"Hardly," Azula dismissed. With a smirk on her face, she offered. "Rather, in the last few months, I've started listening to it again."

"Where did you go after the South Pole?" the Avatar asked, obviously trying to steer the conversation to less confrontational avenues.

"Great Whales. I'd recommend it, but you're a fairly unpopular figure down there, as I hear it," Azula said idly, giving Katara a significant glance. Agni's blood, where the hell was Ked? She needed to talk to him. Fairly desperately, if she were to be honest with herself.

"I don't believe you. You couldn't have anything to do with Zuko's mother. The way he talks about her, she's pretty much the anti-you," Katara said. Azula let out a sigh, got up, and moved toward the door. "Where are you going?"

"Well, if you're not going to be amenable to reality, let alone reason, then I have no reason to talk to you," Azula said. "Have you _talked_ to my mother? She's only a few hallways away, after all. Have you ever wondered that maybe Zuzu is just idealizing the mother he wants to remember? I have no time or tolerance for people who only believe what conforms to their version of reality. If and when you prove that you aren't that sort of person, then we can talk. Until then, I have nothing to say to you," Azula said.

It was totally worth it to see the look of restrained wrath on the waterbender's face.

"Katara, don't do it," the Avatar said quietly, pleadingly.

"Don't do what?" she asked, as Azula cleared the door. Her tone was just a touch too sweet, a denial without so many words. Inside, Azula was very glad that she had traveled with her brother, rather than she herself. With her, it would have been interminable.

Azula quickly vanished into one of the side corridors which dove into the warren which was the servants areas. Much as she avoided these places in her later life, as a child, she traveled them to the point of memorization. Mostly because they were shortcuts from anywhere, to anywhere. So she emerged in the entrance hall long before somebody traveling the normal routes would have been able to. That just meant that she was about five minutes early for when Coordinator Azul strode easily into the palace. She stayed in the shadows, unobserved by anybody, as he passed her by, and headed into the throneroom where Zuzu was waiting. Her mind scrambled, trying to think of what she was going to say, what she was going to do. By the time a blocky Tribesman appeared through the threshold into the chamber, she still hadn't come up with a single good idea. So she went with a bad one.

She grabbed him and hauled him aside, with barely a yelp from him when she did so. She gave him a glance, which she hoped told him to stay quiet. It must have worked, because he didn't say a word until she pulled him into one of the old, abandoned Fire Sage cells. It wasn't big, just large enough for a bed, a latrine, a lantern, and a writing desk. She sat him down on the bed, and started to pace. Back and forth. Back and forth. Trying to think of something to say.

"Um... Are you... happy to see me?" Ked asked, looking at the dusty room with some degree of confusion.

"What? Of course," she said with a shake of her head. "I... got some news today."

"What sort of news."

"Bad. Maybe good. I honestly don't know," Azula stopped, half-sitting on the edge of the desk. When it let out an ominous groan, she abandoned that and resumed pacing. "I mean, most people would say it's good news. But I... I don't know why, but it scares me."

"What news?" Ked asked, concern plain and obvious on his face. There was no guile about him. Not in this. It was one of those things she appreciated... dare say loved... about him. That he was honest. She took a deep breath, and repeated the news she had been given late last night, before it led into a sleepless night which no doubt made her look half-way dead.

"You kinda trailed off there at the end, you're what?" Ked asked.

"I'm... well... pregnant," she said, hoping that the dread that came with that word didn't seep through.

She would have to wonder for a moment longer, because Ked brightened like the sun itself had ignited inside him, and he jumped up, giving her a sweeping embrace, laughing and hollering. But when he stopped, set her down, and leaned against the wall, that smile quickly curdled. Because he started looking at her again. "Wait. What's wrong? Is something wrong?"

"I'm scared," Azula admitted, her voice small.

"Why?"

Azula didn't have a satisfactory answer for that.

"I'm not sure," she admitted. "But I keep thinking back to everything that happened to me and I can't help but think that I shouldn't have children. I mean, what kind of a parent could I even be? The only parent I really knew, growing up, was _OZAI_!"

She sat on the edge of the bed, her head falling in her hands. Frustrating her beyond reason, tears began to seep through her fingers. She really didn't want to cry right now, but her tear ducts were not obeying her conscious mind at the moment. "I mean, I can't be a mother! I just can't! I'm a warrior! All I'm good for is fighting!"

"Do you really believe that?" Ked said, sitting next to her, pulling her close. Despite feeling like a bit of a moron, intellectually, for being so worked up, she couldn't stifle her sobs nor slow her tears. "Because I think you'd be a terrific mother."

"More like terrifying," Azula muttered.

"Think about it. Who could possibly have safer children than the most powerful bender on the world? Who would ever bully them, knowing the price they would have to pay? I know that your children would never go hungry, they would never be afraid, they would always be safe," Ked said.

"But what if you're wrong?" she asked, her words hitched up by sobs. She really wanted to not cry right now. Really. REALLY.

"What if I'm not?" he countered. And alas, she was still crying. "You can't run away from this. It'll be right there with you. And it isn't going to be as bad as you're afraid. I know that for a fact. It'll be awkward, maybe a bit painful, but in the end, you'll have somebody you know you can love unconditionally and unwaveringly, somebody who sees you as the greatest human being on the planet."

"Agni's blood, that's even worse!" Azula said, her body hunching over, and her breath coming so hard and fast that she was starting to hyperventilate. But at least, to her benefit, she wasn't crying anymore. "I'm not a role model! I can't be a mother! This has to be some sort of mistake, maybe she was wrong," she let out a laugh which was at least a little bit crazy, even to her own ears. "Yes, that's what it is. It has to be a mistake. Azula can't have children. The universe wouldn't allow that."

"To hell with the universe," Ked said, a bit angry. She felt her chin being tipped up, and he was giving her the sort of kiss that she once used on him, months ago, on Betla. When they parted, she slumped a bit on the bed, her breathing deep and slowed. "I promise you, it's going to be alright. Because we're going to face this together."

Azula nodded, unable to come up with anything salient to say to the conversation. She still had that fear, but now, it wasn't threatening to explode out of her anymore. Ked shifted so he was sitting on the bed, and pulled her close once more. She slipped a leg over and crawled up onto his lap, burying her face in his shoulder. In that embrace, she felt safe. And she really needed that right now.

Ked let out a contented sigh. "I'm going to be a daddy," he whispered.

* * *

Ursa had scarcely left the side of her descendants for the rest of the day, which left Zuko basking, Mai somewhat mollified, and Sokka amused. And that last one was the only one he could be really sure of. As the day had gone on, the situation was laid out in full, and Sokka had not tarried or let his attention drift. That would have been reckless. And not the fun kind of reckless, which he excelled at, but rather, the stupid kind. But the night had come, and since Azula had not shown herself in, well, half a day, he figured that his countryman and the former royal were having some private time. Not that he begrudged that at all. He knew from experience that hazardous partings made for amorous reunions.

So Sokka had been following one of the two factors which had always guided his life. In this case, his stomach. Gran Gran had always said that the fastest way to a man's heart was through his stomach; Azula had disagreed with that notion when she heard it. She claimed it was much more efficient to go directly through the sternum. Sometimes, Sokka just couldn't tell if she was being obtuse simply for the sake of comedy. Well, to be honest, knowing her, it was probably the case. It was odd the sort of things a mind could wander to while trying to juggle a glazed ham, a sort of pastry with cheese hotter than most varieties of lava melted inside it, and a meat pie with so many varieties of dead animal inside it that Aang still, for all his partial eschewing of his former vegetarian ways, went a little green when it was described to him. And he managed that, despite the notable handicap of only having two hands, one of which was still a little numb.

Well, he was managing quite well until the ham was stolen from him by a grey eyed man who was walking by.

"Hey, that's my ham!" Sokka shouted, releasing a few specks of various meats.

"I was hungrier," the answer came. And Sokka's eyes widened at its source. There were three of them, all grey eyed and their clothes mere tatters, but he recognized Iñagoh Azul despite that. The young man looked exhausted, battered, and his hands were covered in splints and bandages. Sokka dropped his pastry. And not the pie, because it was the best damned pie he'd ever eaten, and he was not going to let it fall, even subconsciously.

"Wait a minute. How aren't you dead?" Sokka asked.

Iñagoh shrugged casually, taking an inelegant bite out of the ham. "They figured that broken hands would make me harmless. So I headbutted one of them to death, broke out the ones who could walk, and we crossed the mountains."

Sokka stared. "In a day."

"I know, _some_ of us were slowing us down," Iñagoh shot a glance to one of his two equally brutalized companions. That companion had the audacity to look somewhat sheepish.

"Do you know how far that is?"

"Jai Maho Agni," Iñagoh repeated. "You know the rest."

As the Coordinator's grandson walked down the hall, Sokka couldn't help but gape a bit. "God damn," Sokka muttered when they turned a corner. "Good thing we never had to fight against _them_."

"Fight against who, honey?" Ty Lee's sweet voice came to him, and he found himself suddenly in an embrace. It wasn't the tackling variety that she usually employed, but was no less inescapable for it.

"Nothing," Sokka said. She had an odd look on her face. Like she had tasted something strange. Knowing her as he did, he knew that something was on her mind. "Is there something you want to talk about?" he asked.

"Uh-huh," she said, and he found himself being tugged toward their room by the hand. Not that he complained. She'd chosen his numb one, so he was still quite able to eat his pie. He was licking his fingers when she closed the door to their outer room.

"So what's this ab..."

"I want to have a baby," she said.

Sokka was silent a moment. "Right now?"

She scowled at him briefly.

Sokka's grin disarmed her. "Alright. What prompted this?"

"Back when you were fighting with Azula in the mountains, I found my sister. We talked about stuff... and I realized that I have everything that I _need_ to make me happy. Now, what I _want_ is to be able to share it," she paused for a moment, nudging at a flagstone with her toe. "It's like what you said, back during The War. How back then, I knew I just wasn't ready to get married, but then time passed, and I was. I think it's the same thing. I wasn't ready before, but now I am."

Sokka smiled at that. The thought of little airbender children – and they would be airbenders, because there was almost no chance, culturally, that he was enough of a Tribesman anymore to pass on that bending mentality – was one which brought a quite pleasant warmth to him. But there was something he needed to do first.

"I'm glad. I really am. But there's something I need to tell you about first, before you get your hopes up."

"Are you sterile?"

"What?" Sokka shouted.

"Usually, that's what it's like in the stories. When they don't want kids, they drop out of the rafters, but if they do, either he's impotent or she's barren and since I know that you're physically capable and judging from how my family was I severely doubt that my seed's going to run dry any time soon so that leaves that there must be..."

Sokka put his hands on her shoulders and weathered her barrage of reproduction tropes in fiction, guiding her into a chair. When she sat, she finally trailed off. "No, it's not that. I'm fairly certain that potency isn't going to be a problem. It's something else that I knew I was going to have to talk about sooner or later."

"What is it?"

Sokka sighed, as the most embarrassing part of his life slipped passed his lips. "Have you ever heard of somebody becoming 'blood drunk'?"

* * *

Trama snapped into cogency very quickly, all things considered. But then again, they had probably been giving him drugs since he was a kid, to keep that earthbending in check. Unlike firebending, even the utterly insane could earthbend. He'd heard from Ked that it was still fairly common practice in the East to euthanize psychotic earthbenders, because there was no decent treatment beyond sedation, and a single rampage could doom a community. But when Trama woke up, all the child did was tug on Chan's cloak until he relinquished it, wrap it around that emaciated body, and become silent.

"_Why do you do that?_" Yui asked in his language, guiding Trama along by the hand. Swathed as the child was, it had to be moving on trust alone.

"_I... I like the dark,_" Trama's voice was very high pitched. "_It's safe in the dark. They don't make me fight when it's dark_."

Chan didn't doubt that. It bothered him, thinking what had happened to make the kid like this. Was it a head injury? Something to do with what happened to his eye, maybe? Or maybe he was just born like that? If so, then the universe was utterly unfair. No kid deserved this. He stood, stretching tired legs, and pointed further into the woods.

"Come on, we have to make good time or they'll be on our trail like hounds," Chan urged.

"We should stay for a while. Trama has to be tired," Yui answered.

"We can't stay. Not here, at least," Chan said. "I'm sorry, but we've got to move."

Yui let out a sigh, and began to guide the blinded earthbender along once more. The going was slow, but given a choice between hauling the kid, kicking screaming and bending furiously, and slowly guiding him by the hand, this was probably the much saner option.

"How are we going to get off of Grand Ember?" Yui asked quietly. "And where will we go when we do?"

Chan sighed. "There's only one place we can go. We stow-away on a ship headed to a neutral port, and then charter for Grand Fire. The Fire Lord might rightly call me a traitor, but he's the safest bet that any of us have."

Yui, if she had a response to that, did not say it.

"Come on. It's still a long way to Fire Fountain City. I think we can make it in a day if we don't..." Chan trailed off, because as he rounded a bend in the trail and entered a clearing, he found himself face to face with something that probably weighed ten tonnes, had six legs, white fur, and a tongue the size of two grown men. He was fairly certain of that last measurement, because he got a fairly good reckoning of it when it flopped up and knocked him to the ground. The bison let out a curious bellow, nudging at him with a nose, before snorting and trundling away.

"Chan, is that a sky bison?" Yui asked, her voice for a moment lighting with wonder.

"Yes, it is," a voice answered, in Huojian, but with a thick Whalesh accent. Beyond the beast, which was now munching contentedly on the underbrush, there was a structure which looked like one of the Fire Nation's airships, but with all of the engines ripped off. A Wind Nomad flying house. The Whaleshman-cum-Wind Nomad clicked his tongue, glanced at a chronometer, and shook his head, a bemused look on his face. "Well, I will be damned. He even had the hour right."

"Who are...?" Chan began.

"You're right on time," the Whaleshman said. "Grand Lotus Iroh told me that you three would be here, at this time, in this place. I guess he really knows his stuff. Get inside. I'll wrangle Deep and we'll be on route to Grand Fire in ten minutes," he gave a nod, and whistled for the beast. Chan gave a glance to Yui, but found an expression as baffled as his own.

"How did he know where we were going?" Yui asked. Chan shrugged his ignorance. "Does this feel weird to you?"

"Ever since I was nineteen, my life has been weird," Chan pointed out. "I'll take good weird for a change."

* * *

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	23. Nothing Golden Lasts I: Familiar Faces

**It's cold and miserable where I live. It's supposed to be summer. Or at least, summer-adjacent. Bah.**

**It's sort of a shame that Chan and Toph never got into a scrap, because they do operate on the same wavelength when it comes to fighting. Oh, yet another missed opportunity. However, as everything that is part of the narrative is by this point set in stone (or at the very least, set in odt format), there's no going back. The pace of the next two chapters ended up being a bit faster than I wanted, but I can't see that as a problem, since it's the end, and stuff tends to happen quickly at the end. Rapid cuts, shaky-cam, moderate-to-severe motion sickness in the viewing audience, half the viewers saying 'that was cool, but what the hell?' and the other half assigning symbolism which I had not intended but am amused to see in retrospect.**

**Or that could just be me. Yes, the title is a reflection of saying goodbye. No, I'm not using this world any more after the War of Flames wraps up. Yes, I did bring Baldur back to life, screwing up Ragnarok even more. Long story. Aaaaand away we go.**

* * *

Long felt the wood under his fingers. It was a blunted sensation, with the callouses he'd developed over the years numbing them quite a bit. It had reached the point where he had to take the same sanding paper he used on his boards to his fingertips in order to get some sensation into them. But the rewards of that onerous task were worth the cost. The wood sang under his care. Rough boards hauled from distant forests, up into the workshop in Omashu, transformed into something transcendent. He'd worked with wood for a long time. Of course, the way he had worked with it back then caused the bile to rise in his throat. It was something that he didn't like to think about.

"Master Long, is this right?" his apprentice asked. She was a teenager, eager, but unsure. She was much like the things he made. Rough and unfinished, but capable of being turned into something spectacular. Long gave it a look and then cast her a glance. It was just a glance, but inside that glance was an entire sentence, perhaps even a conversation. 'No, but it's better than it was', that look said. He was a reticent soul. He hadn't been, not always. But he was now.

"Alright, I'll try again," she said, a hang dog expression on her face.

"It's not bad," he actually said, not looking up from his work. He would not hurt her. He hurt enough people already. Besides, it really wasn't. She was just inexperienced.

She was the younger of the two. The other was more of a journeyman, somebody that had come up under Long, and then never left. Not surprising. The young man had been first partner, then pupil, when Long found that he surpassed the man. That one was quiet, like Long himself. In his case, it was because he just didn't like being around people. Long's was... more complicated. But both could speak through their work, and understood each other because of that. Which was nice. Long didn't like to talk.

"Boss, there's somebody at the door for you," Zha said.

Long sighed, shooting a look which said 'take her order, I'm busy'.

"Yeah, she's not ordering anything," Zha sounded uncomfortable.

"Who?" Long asked.

"Don't know. Some woman. She doesn't look so good. Should I throw her out?"

Long paused. He had his share of loiterers and lallygaggers cluttering up his street. Not surprising because it was right off the main boulevard that ran up the face of Omashu. Every production industry in the oldest city in the world was, too. Getting materials in was hard, so things were... streamlined. Long stood, quickly affixing a clamp to keep the glued sections together. It was less than half finished, and now would actually require more work to construct since he'd broken his rhythm, but his curiosity was winning out.

Long quickly dipped his hands into a bath of something which smelled weird, no matter how often he used it. It stripped the last spatters of glue from his hands, leaving them to tingle as he wiped them off on his apron. He moved aside the curtain which exited the three-walled construction room and into the building's proper area. Ventilation was important when working with glue. He learned that after a night where he was convinced he was the Avatar, and woke up half-naked with a pounding headache on the roof of the house of somebody he'd never met before. That had been embarrassing. Luckily for Long's ego, Zha had ended up in an even more ridiculous predicament. But it had landed the man a wife, so...

Long saw the person that Zha was referring to, since she was the only one there. She also looked quite ill, her flesh quite sallow. For a moment, he almost recognized her. "Well?" he asked, the extent of his introduction exhausted.

"Wow," the woman said, her voice unsteady, and a bit weak. "You got hot, Longshot."

Long felt his stomach fall into his feet. That recognition that had fled him before had swung back around like a Tribesman's boomerang and hit him in the back of the head.

"Bi?" Long asked.

The woman, who he had fought beside for years, didn't look well. To the point of dangerously unhealthy, not well. She was sitting on a stool that he had built, like everything else in this building, bobbing and weaving like she couldn't keep a bead on which way was down. "The one and only. Nice place you have here. It's great that at least one of us made it out," she said.

Long quickly skirted around the counter, examining Bi more closely. She had an odd odor to her, even though she looked a bit raw. Like she had washed recently, which was a change. Bi had never been the most hygenic woman, especially toward the end. After Jet died, she just stopped caring. He could understand why. He gave her a look which asked 'how did you even find me?'

"Asked around for a guy with big ears. They all pointed at you," Bi said, a smirk flitting to her face for a moment. "Sorry. It took a while to get here."

Long let out a single, grunting laugh. "Yeah. 'Bout five years," he said.

"What? I took the scenic route. Did you know that Princess Azula's not as big a bitch as we thought?"

'Color me shocked', his rolling of eyes said. He leaned back against his counter, his arms crossed over his apron.

"So. Carpentry, eh?" she asked.

"Why are you here?" Long cut to the chase. He wasn't a conversationalist at the best of times. Bi just took in a deep breath, and let out an equally deep sigh.

"I can't keep going anymore," she said, her voice very quiet. "I'm just so... tired."

Long nodded, and gave a glance to the man peeking into the room. He gave Zha a glance which clearly said 'lock up when you leave'. He then turned back to Bi. "Come on. Let's get you some place where you can rest."

Bi had a small smile on her face. "Yeah. That'd be nice."

* * *

**Chapter 23: Nothing Golden Lasts I  
Familiar Faces**

* * *

Azula stared at the woman, blinking repeatedly, in utter silence. She even took off her spectacles, as though there might be some illusion between her eyes and the lenses, but the woman remained. Finally convinced that she was not seeing something which didn't exist, she slipped her glasses back on, and gave a glance to Ked. He shrugged. He was as sideswiped by this as she was.

"So this is my doppelganger?" Azula asked. She examined the woman who was glancing round very uncomfortably, after finding herself so suddenly under the scrutiny of the rulers of four fifths of the planet. "Not very convincing. She's too... twitchy."

"Hey, leave her alone, she's had a very hard day," Chan said, laying his hands on her shoulders. Ked couldn't help but raise an eyebrow at that. The firebender turned to the Fire Lord, and had a resolute look on his face. "I know that the first thing you're likely to do is string me up for desertion, and you're welcome to it. But we have to warn you about what's about to happen."

"The Blue Flame is about to firebomb Azul," Zuko said offhandedly and distractedly.

Chan sputtered, growing quite pale. He gave a glance toward Ked. "What? We have our own means of getting information."

"Besides, I'm not going to kill you," Zuko said. "We all know you were working on the inside."

"According to who?" Chan asked, incredulous. A bevy of fingers pointed at Ked. "Really?"

"You're not as much of an ass as I once thought you were. And besides, it looks like you took some of my rants to heart," Ked said with a shrug.

"Welcome back to the proper side of the conflict, Chan son of Chan," Azula said, but she began to tap her bottom lip with her thumbnail. "Correct me if I'm mistaken, but did you sneak out of Grand Ember without much fuss?"

"Can we not talk about that?" the actress said. Despite how much the woman looked like Azula used to, it was the voice which really sold it. If the two of them were to speak in the darkness, Ked was certain he wouldn't be able to tell one from the other. Ked frowned.

"Why not?"

"She had to kill a Dai Li agent there," Chan said gently.

It was Earth King Toph who snorted loudly at that. "That's it? Please, those guys are freebies. It's like killing cockroach rats. Every time you stomp one, you find another dozen of them waiting for a boot."

"Toph!" the Avatar said, moving to the woman's side. "Is this really the time?"

"What?" the short, blind woman asked. "I was just tryin' to give her some perspective."

Avatar Aang did not seem amused by that. He laid a hand on the shoulder opposite Chan's. "I understand what you must be going through right now. It's never easy to take a life..."

"Yeah, sometimes its goddamned effortless," Toph answered. A few glares were shot at her, but she didn't react to them at all.

"...All that matters is that you learn from what happened, that you grow from it. That you take responsibility for what you did and..."

"Can we save this moral prattle for another time?" Azula cut in. "You may seem to have forgotten, but we're under something of a time constraint. It will not be long before the Blue Flame takes the sky, and when they do, Azul will fall into ashes."

Ked frowned. "That doesn't sound like something Long Feng would do," he offered.

"I don't think Long Feng is behind this," Sokka agreed. "This must be Jeong Jeong. But why would he set fire to part of his own nation?"

"I cannot say," Ursa piped in from the side. "Jeong Jeong's agenda has always been utterly opaque to the royal family, ever since he ascended to Firemaster under Azulon. But he does seem to have something against the two of you," she said, motioning to each of her children. She pondered for a moment, then shook her head. "No, that's preposterous."

"What, mother?" Zuko asked.

"I was just thinking; what if this is all a means to destroy the family? That's ridiculous, though. He had decades to do that before, and he was idle," she shook her head once more. "Whatever his ends, it falls to us to make sure he doesn't obtain them. Since his means includes destroying Azul, then we must stymie him."

"What of the northern army?" Toph asked.

"En route," Azula said. "But since the situation has changed, the destination must as well. They will not come here. They will rendezvous with us inside the borders of Azul. It's time we go on the offensive for once."

"And the Republicans?" Zuko asked.

"They'll be the brunt of your Western army, from the looks of the numbers I've seen," she said.

"So what becomes of us?" the actress asked. "I mean, we can't just leave Trama. She's not well."

"_He_ is going to be fine," Toph said, casting a finger toward the tiny figure curled up in a corner, covered all over in a blanket except for one bony foot. "Hard to imagine that kid almost killed me at my coronation."

"And us?" Chan asked.

"Oh, your part in this has yet to be played out," Azula said with a pat on his cheek. It was quite condescending, but at the same time, held that sensuous edge she always seemed to slide into whenever she was at the height of her scheming. She was in control. And she loved that. It was one of the ways she would approach him, that smirk on her face and control on her lips. The other way was how she was a few hours ago. Quiet, shaking, shaken, and needy. A different approach was needed to either. But that she could swing so quickly between them was a bit odd. "Just stick around. Trust me, you will have to see this to believe it."

Zuko snapped his fingers to one side, and a page came to attention. "Show them to a room in the _northern_ wing," he said. There was an implication there, one which Ked didn't understand. He shot a glance to Azula.

"Secure rooms. It's where Ozai would keep the diplomats he didn't trust, so he could keep an eye on them," Ked nodded at that, mollified. The doppelganger and her bodyguard were led away. Azula looked around the people who had gathered in the war room. "Astounding. I must say, I never thought all of us would be in the same room," she paused for a moment. "Well, without trying to kill each other anyway."

"_I wouldn't speak so quickly,_" Katara whispered in her native tongue.

"_I have to say, Azula's managed to be a lot more magnanimous than you,_" Sokka said, beating Ked to the punch.

"_You're taking __her__ side?_" Katara asked. Well, almost shouted, but since only about half the people gathered could understand her, it was mostly blank stares that leveled on her. "_Why?_"

"_Because she's earned it,_" Ked answered. "_Isn't that right?_"

Katara was unhappy, but she didn't seem as spitting with rage as she had been earlier. Who knows, in a year, the two of them _might_ be able to stand next to each other without the waterbender scowling like she had bitten something rotten.

"Anyway," Azula stressed. "We need to leave for Azul if we're going to cut the legs out from under Jeong Jeong's plan. I'd say leave tonight, but I'm frankly exhausted and if we arrive too soon, our northern allies won't be there," she took in a deep breath. "I never thought I would have to fight a war against my own countrymen. Nobody should have to face civil war."

Zuko did nothing but nod at that. Sokka, though, perked up, as though a lantern had spontaneously lit up over his head. "Everybody, stay here for a second. I need to go grab something. Glances were shot between those who remained as the man bounded out of the rooms, chuckling to himself with great cheer. Ked took the moment to draw Azula aside. "Are you really alright?" he asked her. "An hour ago, you were..."

"I was a bit overwhelmed, I admit," she answered calmly. "And I appreciate that you were... willing to weather that fickleness. I needed some time to digest the news. I believe I have."

Ked frowned for a moment. "Are you intellectualizing this?"

"Of course I am. What is, is, and I simply have to accept it."

"But you're not feeling it."

"I'll _feel_ it when I have the spare time and millions of lives are not at stake," she said. But she softened a bit after that proclamation. "And when I actually... believe it."

"Tell me, honestly. Are you alright with all of this?"

She glanced up at him, golden eyes shining, even with the blemishes of his inexact healing. "I'm going to have to be," she said, with that little smile on her face. That smile got a bit wider. "I assume you want to hear the plan?"

"It'd be nice," he said, as he watched Sokka dump an armload of various mechanisms and detritus on the floor, then run off again. She quickly spelled out the intricacies of it, and he had to admit, it was brilliant. That poor bastard wasn't going to see it coming, that was for sure. She had just gotten to the point where she stopped, smirking and crossing her arms under her breasts. "Wow. That's a good plan," he said, as Sokka returned to the room, and furiously began assembling... something.

"Sokka, what is that?" Katara asked.

"It's my new photographic camera!" He exclaimed. Katara groaned.

"Tui La, am I going to have to stand perfectly still for an hour, like last time?" she complained.

"No, this one takes the picture in a fraction of a second," he said with a big grin on his face. He shrugged. "Development on the other hand takes a while... but now, it does it all on its own. Everybody should get in the shot," he said, waving them together. Azula found that when she grouped in with the others, his arm around her waist, that she was standing right beside the waterbending master. The discomfort that caused Katara brought a smirk to Azula's face. The Avatar's expression was weary, but it was a happy sort of weariness. Toph just stood proud as her small frame would allow. Sokka pointed at one of the tapestries along the wall. "You too, Kimi."

"How'd you know I was here?" she said with annoyance, still behind the piece of art.

"I can see your shoes. Yuuki's too."

"You're a bad 'nfluence," Yuuki complained as she got out from behind the tapestry. Ked was a bit shocked. He'd never actually heard the little girl speak before. The two daughters took their place at the front, while Sokka whistled for his wife to approach for a moment. He muttered something to her, and she brightened. He took his place between Aang and Zuko, an arm draped over the shoulder of each. Ty Lee, bright as ever, turned to them.

"Alright! Everybody smile!" she said cheerfully. And then she pressed a lever. In a flash, and a gust of wind, she bounded up onto Sokka's shoulders, standing on her hands with a big grin on her face, just in time for the flash of light, which immortalized them on photographic film.

Nobody even noticed that it had caught Kimiko in the middle of a cartwheel.

* * *

Patience had long been his watch word. Now, things were accelerating to the point where he had some small worry that he might lose track of everything. Things done best were done slowly, deliberately. There was no doubt, no uncertainty, and a strong level of inevitability. The military setback in Azul had been... costly. But then, Han Hua had never been much one to bother with armies. If something needed doing, it required a deft hand, not a clobbering fist.

The last time he had been in this city had been a day of pandemonium. The instance before that, it had been a city with a different name under a different ruler. Oddly, the same woman whom Long Feng struggled mightily with to keep under his thumb. Failing that, he opted for a duplicate of her, which proved just as fruitless, but for different reasons. Han Hua wondered if Long Feng even realized that his plan had entirely failed? Either way, it stood to benefit him best. All he had to do was get this little task over with, then he could devote his full energies to toppling the Grand Secretariat and ending this farce once and for all.

They did not wear their uniforms, however much their nationalism wished they could. There were seven of them, a pair more than was recommended for such an activity, but considering the importance and the reputation of the target, it would behoove him to assume the worst, and plan accordingly. They slipped through the streets of Grand Fire without raising an eyebrow, let alone an alarm. They could have been anybody, even for their complexion and eyes. They broke off into pairs, slipping through the side streets, unaccosted. If Zuko was going to be so criminally negligent as to let all of them slip in so easily, he deserved whatever he was going to get.

Han Hua bounded from one sloping roof to another, his old, aching body not impared enough to stand in his way. Not yet. He still had quite a few years as an active Dai Li left in him; most retired from active service in their forties. Han Hua was into his fifties and still nimble, agile, and quick. He had to be. He had big plans. Ensuring his footing caused a clattering amongst the tiles of the roof, something which was however unfortunate, also unavoidable. Doubly so because they were actually a bit slick. It did not rain often in Grand Fire. Of course it would have to have rained before tonight of all nights.

There was a form beside him. Acting beyond the pace of thought, Han Hua twisted, pulling up shards of obsidian from a hardened leather pouch, and with a mere flick of earthbending, sent them slashing into the chest of a woman who had dared share the roof with him. Her eyes, bright grey in the false twilight of the city, widened in utter confusion that she had somehow been killed, and yet her body still hadn't accepted it. Han Hua made a sound which was close to a laugh.

"So much for the vaunted Azuli assassin," he muttered. There was another slight clatter, and he could see one of his compatriots joining him on the rooftop. The agent gave the barest of glances to the dead Azuli before turning back to Han Hua.

"The others have reached the first position. We await your command to take the guards."

"How many guards?" Han Hua asked.

"Twenty Imperial firebenders, fifteen Azuli," he said. A smirk came to the younger man's face. "So in essence, just the fifteen Azuli."

"Indeed," Han Hua agreed. "His schedule does not change?"

"Not as long as we've been observing it."

"Good," Han Hua nodded. "And the weapons?"

The man handed over a bundle, fairly large and bulky, but a highly effective tool nonetheless. "One for each of the members. Nothing is being left to chance."

"Excellent," Han Hua said. He moved along the rooftop, and with a scrabbling leap, hauled himself over the wall which the house was adjacent to, landing him just inside the grounds of the Royal Palace. The others were waiting for the perfect moment. So was he. "You might be a firebender of some mastery, Zuko," Han Hua said to the weapon, a mechanical bow, as he unfurled it. "But can you bend iron quarrels?"

* * *

Ked had a moment of worry as he stood outside that door. It was the room the two of them shared, but at the moment, he wasn't exactly sure if he was welcome. No, that wasn't true, he was sure he was welcome. Rather, he wasn't sure if he would be doing more harm than good. He tried thinking about it from every angle, but this was a problem that he simply couldn't penetrate. He reached toward the door's handle, and it swung inward, an unimpressed looking Azula standing on the other side of it. "Five minutes? Really?"

"How did you know I was out here that long?"

"You talk to yourself," she pointed out.

"So do you."

"Of course," she said without a sliver of guilt or shame. "It is the surest way of conversing with one's intellectual equal. Why are you reluctant to come in?"

"You're being cold."

"Really?" she asked.

"Are you really alright with what's going on?" Ked asked, moving a bit closer. She stepped aside, letting him enter, but her gaze drifted to the floor.

"I don't have time to worry about it," she said. "If I did, I'm sure you'd be the first to hear about it, but as it stands, I have no faith that I will be any sort of decent mother. But that's not something I can deal with right now. I have to focus on the battle ahead of me."

"You're not seriously going to fight, are you?"

"I have to," she said. "That's what I am."

"According to who?" Ked asked with annoyance. "Ozai? The man we both took turns beating half-way to death?"

"It doesn't matter. I'm a warrior, and that means it is my place to fight. Just like you, as a doctor, are meant to heal. We can't alter who we are."

"Why not? You seem to know what others want, but what do _you_ want?" Ked pressed.

"I want to sleep," she said with a sarcastic smirk.

"Azula, please," he said. She sighed, her eyes drifting closed as she leaned against the wall near the door. The room seemed positively cavernous right now. There was a long silence which stretched out between them. "Do _you_ want to fight? Or is that just what you think you have to do?"

She seemed like she was a loss for words. For a moment, anyway. Then, she took in another deep breath, and looked up at the ceiling, as though unable to focus on him. "I want... to be remembered," she said.

"Who doesn't?" Ked asked. She shook her head.

"I don't want to be some sort of morality tale. I don't want people to speak my name in hushed whispers years after I'm gone. 'Don't be naughty, young child, or you'll end up like Crazy Princess Azula'."

"Don't call yourself crazy," Ked said quietly.

"I was speaking hypothetically," she said, distracted. "I want to have something remain of me, when I'm gone. I want to mean something. I want to..." she scowled. "Damn it, I hate when I can't figure out how to say something. I took years of erudition classes just so this sort of thing wouldn't happen."

"This isn't something that they can teach you in any class. It's what you want. So what do you want?"

She sighed. "I want to prove that I'm worth it," she said quite quietly. "I want to know that I deserve what I have," she glanced up at him. "And yes, I do want to know beyond all reasonable doubt that I'm loved, so I managed to get one of those so far. Hooray me. But children? That's... something I'm not prepared for."

"I can't think of many who ever are," Ked said. He pulled her close and gave her a tight embrace, one which she seemed to need. "You don't need to hide from what you feel. It's alright to let it out."

"I've let out quite enough of my feelings for one day," she said, a smirk coming to her face. "If I don't ration them out, I might well run out of them. And that would be just terrible, wouldn't it?"

"Good to see your sarcasm's still in fighting trim," Ked said with a chuckle. She nodded, hiding a yawn daintily behind the back of her hand. "Do you need me to..."

"No, I'm tired enough that I could probably fall asleep standing up," she told him. She moved toward her bed for a moment, pausing before she reached it. She looked back at him. "For what it's worth, I have no doubts that you'd make an exceptional father."

That brought a smile to Ked's face. "Sleep well."

"No problems there," she said. Ked left, closing the door behind him to the swish of moving covers. He was of divided mind. Part of him wanted to be in there with her, making sure that she was actually alright, pulling the conversation out of her. But another part of him, a part which was only just beginning to understand the importance of being mellow, told him to let her sort it out as she did. She had a mind quite unlike his. It wasn't that she was a woman and he a man, nor that she a National and he a Tribesman. It was more basic than that. She simply thought differently from how he did. Additionally, Ked's wired state wouldn't have made for much in the way of rest, which she obviously needed somewhat desperately. So he wandered the palace. The last time he'd been in here, it was years ago, and it had been a much more rigid experience. That Tribesman's curiosity demanded that he explore a new horizon, and a palace was sufficient.

He hadn't been wandering long when there was a muffled bang, followed by something like maniacal laughter. Ked's eyebrow rose, as smoke began to waft out from under a nearby door. That door burst open, and the lanky Tribesman and another, shorter man with a pair of fake legs stumbled out. The taller was laughing like the whole bizarre situation was unspeakably hilarious. The shorter was not so impressed.

"Really? Does _everything_ you touch explode?" he asked, wiping off the smutted lenses of a pair of goggles. The smoke had otherwise left bright white rings immediately around his eyes, as it had blackened the rest of his face.

"Oh, please, your father makes way bigger explosions than that."

"You say that like it's a good thing!"

Sokka laughed for a moment. "Gotta say, Teo, when you saw that thing cooking off, you'd think those were your real legs considering how fast you ran."

"What are you two doing?" Ked asked, his curiosity mixing with his annoyance into a very strange stew. "You do realize that you're going to Azul in the morning, right?"

"I couldn't sleep, so I decided to do some science," Sokka said.

"And then he blew up my difference engine," Teo said darkly.

"I'll help you rebuild it when I get back," Sokka said distractedly. "I mean really, how much time had you put into that?"

"Eleven months," Teo said, his arms crossed in aggravation. Sokka winced at that.

"Oooookay. Well, I'll figure something out. Small fry here is right, though. Early morning, lots of combat. Probably shouldn't keep the wife waiting, either. And neither should you."

Teo rolled his eyes and walked away with a gait appropriately strange for the fact that his legs were devices of wood and springs. Ked watched him leave for a moment. "So who is that, again?"

"Toph's husband," Sokka said. Ked raised an eyebrow.

"She's married?" he asked. "I never would have thought."

"Yeah, well, whenever Toph's around, you need to be a special kind of badass. If you're not, you just sort of fade into the background," Sokka said. A goofy grin slipped back onto his face. "Come on, you and I should go drinking."

"What is with you?" Ked said, batting away the arm that Sokka had looped over his shoulder. "Did you suck a cactus or something?"

"I'm excited! Science gets me all wired up!" he let out a laugh at that. Ked raised an eyebrow. "Well, if you're not going to go along with my zany schemes, I guess I'll have to run down Zuko and see if he's up for some misadventures."

Sokka loped away, leaving Ked behind, to shake his head. "How the hell did you survive the Weary War?" he asked. Sokka didn't offer an answer. With a defeated sigh, Ked followed after. Most notably because Azula's plan required him, and a drunken Sokka wasn't going to be of much help to anybody.

* * *

Zuko let another flare lance out along the grounds of the Fire Court. He knew, both from past and present experience that in terms of power, his younger sister would beat him every time. But he practiced a lot more than she did, and in much harsher conditions. He could bend as well at midnight in a driving rainstorm as he could under a naked noon. Perhaps not the most glamorous kind of bending, he had to admit, but it served him well enough. Tomorrow was going to be a big day, and he had his part to play in it. So he had to stay limber. Stay fit. Odd to think that he felt that urge despite his mere twenty five years, but there was so much that he had to attend to, he feared he would lose track of something as simple as firebending if he didn't pay it attention.

Bereft of the grunt of angry effort that once accompanied every blast of flame, he flowed through the movements, feeling for any break in his form, any wavering of the power that he could access. There was none. What he lacked in power, he made up for in reliability. Zuko let his hands drop, and rolled his shoulders. The set was done, and he still had everything up to par. That was the best he could hope for.

"Hey! Crankypants!" Sokka's voice sounded across the yard with its characteristic bravado and bluster.

Zuko sighed.

"Yes, Sokka?" he asked. The Tribesmen, for the young doctor was at his side, made their way into the vast space, flanked by stands which were for this late hour emptied. Ever since Zuko had taken over as Fire Lord, the Fire Court was used for events besides ritualized pyromaniacal maimings. Not that he was disparaging any part of his culture. It just felt good to have this being used for something else.

"What's that tone about? I thought you'd be excited to finally be back in the saddle again," Sokka pointed out.

"It could be that maybe he's got other things to worry about?" the doctor offered, with a shrug toward Zuko.

"Oh, please. Who wouldn't want to depart on an adventure with a strong, distinct chance of death?" Sokka said, with something lying between sarcasm and eagerness in his tone. "But seriously; can't sleep. Thought I'd bug the man in charge."

"In the middle of the night before the big day?" Zuko asked.

"It's not like I've got anything better to do at the moment," Sokka said. He turned, and moved to where Zuko had left his robes, discarded thoughtlessly on the bench to one side. Ked, who had stayed near the outer edge, rolled his eyes. "Come on, we should share some whiskey and talk about old times."

"I really think this is hardly the time for hurghk..."

It was strange the sound one made when a crossbow bolt penetrated one's lung. Sokka half turned, but there was a sound of zipping through the air, and he hurled himself aside, getting the quarrel to tear along his shoulder instead of split his neck in twain. Shocking, unbelievable pain blossomed from Zuko's wound. And then, there was an impact which drove him back a step, as a second bold slammed into his chest, hardly an inch from the first. He looked up, and he could see... something. His vision was fading quickly as his body panicked, pulling blood in and away from his suddenly frigid, numb hands and feet. The next one, which struck much lower in his abdomen, and from behind, dropped him to a knee. He could hear other zipping through the air, but since it didn't hit him, he couldn't focus on it.

"What...?" Zuko rasped, his mind not fully able to understand what was happening. How had they gotten past the guards? How had they...

Zuko crumpled to the Fire Court, his blood fanning out like his standard. He hadn't gotten a chance to say goodbye.

* * *

Aang's entire body slammed into awakedness in a shock so severe it almost drew a scream from him, as he bolted to his feet in the hot, Fire Nation night. Katara let out a confused, muffled grunt, before pulling herself up as well. "Aang, what is it?" She asked.

"Who's there?" the Avatar asked. He knew he could sense somebody else here. But it was indistinct; the sensation he got through the stone of the Fire Palace, using the trick that Toph had exhaustively taught him, was indistinct. More than usual, even. She had made a sense of vision out of it, while Aang's had by necessity remained much more rudimentary. He ignited a golden flame in his palm, bathing the bedroom in a warm light.

There was a high, girlish shriek, and that something Aang felt moved away quickly, turning away from the sudden brightness. Aang was on his feet, and so was his wife. But the threat, if it was even that, turned out to be a child of maybe thirteen years, huddled in an oversized cloak, turned away from them both. Aang gave Katara a glance, and she shrugged, unable to offer any insight that he didn't already know.

"Trama? It is Trama, isn't it?" Aang asked.

"Too bright," the boy said quietly. "Just too bright."

"Aang, light a candle," Katara said, offering one to him. He set flame to wick, and let that globe in his hand snuff. The light in the room was much fainter, just enough to make out the boy, and the two adults, and not in great detail. "Why are you here, Trama?" Katara asked, concern plain in her voice.

"You can take it away," Trama said.

"What do you mean?" Aang asked. "Take what?"

"Can't make it small," Trama's voice quavered. "It's always big, always too big. It hurts. I don't want to hurt."

"What's hurting you?" Katara asked.

"Not me. Doesn't hurt me. Don't want to hurt."

Aang almost felt his heart break. "You don't want to hurt other people?" he asked.

"They always make me hurt. Don't want to hurt. Just want to be left alone," he said. "If you take it away, they'll leave me alone."

"Aang, is he asking what I think he is?" Katara asked, bafflement plain in her voice.

Aang couldn't believe his ears himself. "Trama... are you asking me to take your earthbending away?"

"I don't want it. Others make me hurt. Don't want to hurt. Don't want to kill. Just want to be left alone. Always hurts. Can't make it small," he was practically weeping by the end of his tirade. "Please. I just want it gone."

"If you do this, you will never earthbend again. Do you understand that?" Aang asked. This felt wrong. To do this to Ozai? That was what was needed, a punishment earned in years of brutality and avarice. But to do it to a thirteen year old boy who never asked to be here? Who never wanted to be the person that others made him into? It was just wrong. It was against what he believed as much as was killing. "You'll lose a part of yourself that you can't ever replace. I mean, I... I don't think I can do this..."

"I understand," Katara said.

Trama's eyes, be they green or milky white, widened, and he moved forward with remarkable speed. There was a rumble as the stone in the room obeyed his unconscious command. Aang could feel cracks running through the walls. "No! Have to make it go away! It's the only way I'll be safe!"

Aang looked down at the child. This was how old Aang was when he learned about Sozin's Comet. What justice was there in the world that Aang got to be Avatar, to be married to somebody beautiful and compassionate like Katara, that he could have all of this power, and somebody else like this was turned into a weapon? It just wasn't fair. It was wrong.

"I can't undo this," Aang said. A lie. If he wanted to, he could make Trama even stronger, a new coming of Kyoshi.

"Just make it stop," the boy pleaded.

Aang reached down his hand, setting it on the boy's brow. His other hand pulled the boy to his feet, and then set upon his heart. There was a moment of pristine clarity, while he prepared for the maelstrom. In the back of his mind, the combined voices of all of the previous Avatars held their breath. There had been no more harrowing experience that he had ever experienced than stripping Ozai's spark and consigning it to the ether. And he, for whatever value of sane, had been in his right mind. Trama was much more damaged.

He held his breath, and nothing came.

"Aang, what's wrong?" Katara's voice was very distant. Aang opened his eyes, inside that place inside his mind. It was like a room, its walls and ceiling and floor all of one color. He stood at one side of the room. The other, sat next to the opposite wall. It took Aang a moment to recognize Trama, there. The boy was younger, smaller. The two eyes were both brilliant green, and he had a smile on his face.

"Are you going to help me sleep?" the child asked.

"Do you have nightmares?" Aang asked.

The child nodded, that smile slipping away. "I dream of what they make me do, because of what I'm capable of. I just want it to stop. I don't care what happens after that. I just want. It. To. Stop."

Aang could feel the desperate sincerity, the need. So he opened up the gates. He let the power of the Avatar surge through him. But it was so different. When he tore the spark out of Ozai's grasp, even to the last instant, the despot had clung to it, hording every scrap to himself. It had been plucking shards of broken glass out of a madman's hands with chopsticks. This... was more like scooping up a hard boiled egg in a spoon.

Trama wasn't just letting go. He was pushing it away.

With that spark in hand, he released it into the void. There was no surge of thunder, no parting of the clouds. There was just a sigh, a relieved sigh, as the room returned to Aang's perception. The boy slumped, shaking. Katara stared at him.

"Did you...?" she asked.

"I couldn't not," Aang said quietly. The boy winced, flaring out a hand. Nothing happened. Trama got a little smile on his face.

"Can I...?" the boy said.

"What is it?" Katara asked, laying a gentle hand on his shoulder.

"Can I stay here tonight?" he asked quietly. Aang gave a glance to his wife, who looked like she was on the verge of tears.

"Of course you can," she said. Aang blew out the candle with a waft of airbending, and darkness returned to the bedroom.

* * *

"ZUKO!" Sokka screamed as the man crumpled. He had to roll, twisting his body away from the next two arrows which almost sent the Tribesman to the same fate as had befallen the Fire Lord. He cast a hand toward the water that ran in the channels under him. There was no point in being subtle right now, and since he'd left his flasks back in his room, he needed something to hold his ammunition for him. An icy claw was the best he could manage.

"_Are you hit?_" Ked's shout sounded from across the great expanse.

"_No! Can you reach Zuko?_"

"_Not without getting pincushioned!_" Ked shouted. Sokka felt a growl powering in the back of his throat. This wasn't fair. Just shooting him from the dark. That wasn't the way anybody was supposed to die. He could feel a red mist pressing in on him, but every ounce of his rational mind screamed at him to push it back, to stay in control. He didn't need stamina or immunity to pain. He needed his mind. He needed to think

"_Can you get to the roof?_" Ked's voice reached across the void again, as before, in their shared native tongue.

"_I need twelve seconds, and I've got three before they feather me,_" Sokka shouted back. "_Why? You got a plan?_"

"_Yeah, but it's a terrible one,_" Ked answered. "_Break for it on three. One. Two..._"

Sokka glanced around his pillar just in time to behold the blocky Tribesman bounding out of cover, waving his hands above him. "HEY! LOOK AT ME! I'M A TARGET!" he shouted in Tianxia, before diving aside again, this time followed by five snapping sounds, five whizzes through the air. Five bolts breaking against the stone. Not seven. Damn it, it would have to do.

Using the claw to adhere to the column, he scaled the slick stone like a parrot lizard up a tree, and in even less time. He had just pulled himself up onto the tiles of the roof when he heard another whizzing sound coming toward him. Operating on instincts instilled in him from childhood, the same which allowed him to catch his boomerang even if he couldn't see it, he snapped his claw forward, and with tremendous effort, bloomed the water out, before snapping it frozen again, the bolt wedged inside.

And now Sokka knew where to start running.

His boots, supple leather from the South Pole, but soled in Fire Nation rubber, clung to the slick tiles, giving him the footing he needed to traverse the distance toward the obscured figure. He was shorter than Ked by a strong measure. Easterner. Dai Li. The way he lashed out with a stone glove when Sokka got too close confirmed it. Sokka managed to dodge that attack easily enough. Oh, what he would give to have his sword right now. But all he had was a crossbow bolt. It would have to do.

Sokka tore the bolt from the water of his claw, and flipped it so that its point was barely below the heel of his hand. He dodged under a second thrust of a stone glove, and rose to drive the bolt up through the man's ribs. Not deep enough. He couldn't enough grip, enough penetration. He was wounding the man, but it wasn't going to be enough. There was a clatter of tile, and Sokka turned to see another Dai Li, leveling a second crossbow at him. Sokka froze his claw around the man's shoulder, and with the unshakable grip in place, twisted the Dai Li into the line of fire. The crossbow snapped, and the quarrel bridged the distance in a blink. And by the time it did, it landed not in the flesh of a Tribesman, but in the back of a Dai Li. Sokka thanked the man by sending a sharpened spike of ice through his neck.

"What the hell is this? You never said he was a waterbender!" A voice cried.

"It doesn't matter. Kill him anyway!" the voice was one that Sokka knew very well. Han Hua. He was a member of the White Lotus... what was he doing assassinating the Fire Lord? Sokka didn't have time to be distracted. Especially since he could see them, now.

Sokka took the distance between them and cast it aside, advancing on them as they struggled to reload the bulky contraptions. There was a reason why those things had never been more than a curiosity. Yes, they hit hard enough to take down a Rhino, but the reload was atrocious. Finally, the closest of them abandoned the device, opting for his hands and his feet. He glided along the tiles, giving just a little bit more momentum to the punch that he threw. But it was like all Dai Li punches; extremely predictable if you manage to live long enough to see it a few times. Sokka dove onto his chest, sliding on the slick tiles for a moment before he felt what he was looking for under one hand. A loose tile. He kipped up, twisting the tile out of place. The other hand of the Dai Li had turned into something like a beastial claw of stone, and another of them was coming to aid him. Sokka had to be quick.

Sokka dodged just enough to let the claws rake along his chest rather than tear out his throat, then spun and smashed the Eastern assassin in the face with the heavy, fired clay tile. It shattered over the man's head, but its weight had done what Sokka had hoped, cracking the skull and sending him headfirst over the edge and dashing him onto the ground of the Fire Court. Not waiting even long enough to allow his next foe a first move, he grasped the jagged shard of the tile that remained, slid around the man, and slammed the sliver with brutal force up the man's nose. He looked up, and his heart dropped.

The other two were aiming at him. There was nowhere to run.

Luckily, he didn't need to. A whip of water, much lesser than his sister was capable of but no less welcome for it, reached up and lashed the legs of the farther of the two. Hauling that one in drove him into the other, causing both to plummet off the roof. It wasn't a lethally long distance, but below, Ked was waiting to finish them, transforming the water whip into something more like a water pickaxe, and introducing it to a pair of chest cavities. Sokka looked up. One left. Sokka felt a smirk come to his face.

"Did you really think it would be that easy?" Han Hua asked.

"Pretty much, yeah," Sokka said with a smirk. He prepared to dodge the inevitable punch... but instead, the man rose his bare fingers, and the tiles under his feet dropped away, sending him plummeting the nine or ten paces to the hard stone below. He was fairly sure he blacked out for a moment, but it mustn't have been much more than that, because he could still see the two Dai Li down here bleeding, and a third with a smashed head. Ked had rushed to Zuko's side, and laid a pair of glowing hands on him. Sokka tried shouting to the other waterbender, but the sound which came out of his mouth more closely resembled a croak mixed with a groan than a useful sound. Sokka got half way to his feet and tried again. But he could see the traitor advancing down the court, calm as one would please.

And Sokka could see a big, red button, right next to him. "Eat this," Sokka muttered as he pounded the button. On the far side of the yard, the massive Baihu coil hummed to life. Han gave it barely a glance, pulling out a staff from behind him, and setting its base to the ground. There was a harsh electric snap, and the lightning struck... the pole. Leaving Han Hua utterly unharmed.

"Nice try," Han Hua said. "But you aren't the only one who knows how electricity works, Baihu."

"Ked, get over here," Sokka said. The bolt had only grounded out because it reached the pole before the man. Ked shot him a glance, then another look toward Zuko, under his hands. Sokka began to trade distance, putting himself between Han Hua and Zuko, while the healer moved toward where Sokka had been standing. No words passed between the two Tribesmen. None needed to. "You're not getting to him," Sokka said, feeling the immense pain in his body but not surrendering to it. He needed to be smart, not tough. Think smart, fight smart.

"Please, you are in no position to stop me," Han said. A flick of his hand, and the stone under Sokka's feet shifted, tossing him to the ground. Han walked past, clipping Sokka in the head with the copper head of the staff. Though it hurt like hell, and stars flit in his vision, he still stayed awake. Stayed conscious. Stayed in the fight. And now, he was even in proper position. "I've never killed a Fire Lord before," the Dai Li said idly, as he drew up shards of obsidian stone from a pouch, forming a brutal claw from them.

"NOW!" Sokka shouted.

Ked slammed his fist on the button, and the Baihu coil screamed to life again. Han turned to it, grounding himself with the pole. But he wasn't the closest target. Sokka was. There was a harsh electric snap.

Sokka could feel it coming, that energy flowing in the world. It was a motion he had practiced to perfection. As it reached him, he opened a hand, and guided it. Just a gentle nudging of electric current, bending it away from himself, and in another direction. Like, say, the unprotected back of a Dai Li assassin. Whatever expression Han Hua had on his face, Sokka was sadly denied the opportunity to see it, because the bolt lifted him and sent him flying past the supine Fire Lord. Sokka scrambled after him, his footing uneven, and drove a fist down into the bastard's one eyed face. The cracking of the traitor's head against the stone was very satisfying.

Sokka caught a glance of something blue in the man's pouch. Sokka hauled it out, and found his own boomerang in his hand. "Man, this thing just can't help but come back, can it?" he said, tapping its face to his lips. "Nice try, Han Hua. Nice try," Sokka said.

The popping of his neck wasn't quite as rewarding, but it was long overdue. Sokka turned to Ked, who had raced to Zuko's side and was in the process of pulling out the bolts with one hand, as the other, aglow with water, pressed down on the wounds. "Is he alright?"

"He's lost a lot of blood," Ked reported, his tone distracted and tense. "He's got massive damage to his lung and one of the bolts shredded his intestines and nicked his liver."

"And that means?"

"He'll live, but he won't be fighting tomorrow," Ked answered. Sokka let out a sigh he didn't know he was holding in, then cupped his hands to his mouth and roared. "ASSASSINS!"

The night awakened to the clattering of klaxons, entirely too late.

* * *

It was a good thing that it was warm in Omashu. Towards the end of her long walk, she had run out of the money she'd lifted from the Tribesman and took to sleeping under bushes. That definitely hadn't helped with her infirmity. Gods, she hated having to think that way. Her infirmity. It was all the more grating that she inflicted it upon herself. A splash of water, and she doused her head, the last of the stinging, caustic foam sliding down her back, stripping out possibly years worth of grime from her hair. Now, rather than stick out in every direction, it lay flatly and wetly against her face, for the few seconds it took her to simply sweep it back. She'd never been one to give her appearance much thought. It didn't help that the best that could be said of Bi Bei was that she was 'odd looking'. Usually, her descriptions were far less kind.

Gods, she just wanted to sleep for a year.

She left the small back room and swung open a door. Longshot was waiting there, leaning against the wall as he was wont to do. It was a habit which seemed to bridge the years before to the now. He glanced toward her, taking in her soaking nudity neither a wince nor a leer. He just accepted what he saw, and nodded toward some clean clothes. She moved to them, pulling on a shirt, but then running out of effort.

"I'm going to pay for all of this," Bi said quietly. "I'm not some freeloader, and I ain't some charity case."

'I never thought you were', Shot's look said.

"It's a nice place you've got here," Bi commented lethargically. "How much it set you back?"

Shot's shrug said 'It is all that I really need.'

A bitter smirk came to her face. "Funny," she uttered. "I figured that 'soon as you got all hot, you'd have ladies hanging from the rafters."

Longshot simply sighed.

"Which has got me wondering. Are you gay or something?" Bi asked.

Shot shook his head, and took in a breath. "It's hard to talk to people," Shot said, his soft voice very quiet. "After the things I did. They wouldn't understand."

Bi couldn't help but nod at that. "Yeah. You were with Jet's Freedom Fighters longer than most. Almost as long as me."

Shot nodded. "Didn't have a choice. Fight and steal, or starve. Plenty of rabbits, but not much else. Eating just rabbit can kill you, after all," he noted.

"Really? How does that work?"

"Don't know. Just if you eat only rabbit, it kills you," he shrugged. Even so, it was more coming out of the man's mouth than she had heard in any one instance at any point in their long association. His glance toward her was complex enough that she couldn't decode it completely, but there was an aspect of 'I did what I had to do'.

"Did you have family?" Bi asked. Longshot stared at her for a moment. Then, he nodded. "Brothers?" head shaken. "Sisters?" he nodded slowly. "A lot of them," she finished. "How old were you?"

"Ten," he said. "I heard them die."

"Same here," Bi said. "You know about my parents, don't you? Well, I might have lied a bit about them. See... they were... royalty." Shot's eyeroll screamed a sarcastic 'well color me shocked'. "You knew about it?" He gave her a look which asked if she thought him a complete moron. "Well, Fire Nation lined them up against a wall and flashed them 'cause they wouldn't stop resisting their occupation. Then, well, you know the rest of what happened to Three Hills."

"We never stood a chance," Longshot said quietly. Sadly. Bi couldn't do anything but shake her head, agreeing with him.

"I'm twenty four," Bi said. "Never thought I'd last this long."

Shot's bitter smirk said 'Neither did I'.

Bi and Shot were silent for a long time. No weapons. No war. No fighting. What was there to talk about? What was there to do? What the hell was Bi even doing here? "Did Jet ever tell you about when I was eight?" she found herself asking. Shot shook his head. "I was with Jet with his first bunch. Mostly teenagers, and there was me only seven when it started, but everybody followed Jet, even though he was only nine. You ever notice how he just... had a way? Like you'd follow him into the mouth of Hell, because you were sure he'd bring you back out again?"

Shot nodded at that, a distant look in his very dark eyes.

"Well, there were nine of us back then. We hadn't started 'freedom fighting', not yet. It was mostly just banding together, stealing from the Fire Nation, and trying to help keep ourselves from starving. We were young, back then. Innocent. Our families were gone. So we became each others' families. There was Jubei, he was a Fire Nation traitor's kid, so he was fine by us. Ears and Grunt and Lee. And you knew Sneers."

"Why just Sneers?" Shot asked. "Who were those other people?"

"The ones who didn't make it," Bi said. "I was eight years old, well, just about. Jet wanted to steal some sugar so that we could make a big cake. Me and two others had birthdays all within a few days, so we decided may as well throw a big party. Well, when we snuck into town, the Fire Nation was on us. At first, they scooped up Ears and threw her in prison. I get the big idea to bust her out, and lark off to do it myself. I got her out alright. In two pieces," she sighed to herself. "It was all going so well, until we were almost out. Somebody got in my way, so I stuck him. But he was... tough. And he was fast with a scimitar. After that, it we weren't facing imprisonment anymore. The order was to kill on sight."

"You were children," Shot said. "That isn't right."

"Well, turns out the guy I put a hole in had some pull. People didn't like him getting shanked by some bitch from the East. So the next couple of days, everything goes pear shaped. Everybody's coming out of the woodwork to spit us on a spear or set us on fire. And they knew way too much about what we were doing. Every place we ran, they were waiting for us. Every time we tried to snatch some food, there was an ambush. Every day, we just got fewer and fewer. But that's when I figured it out. Somebody was selling us to the Fire Nation. Somebody on the inside."

"So you dealt with it," Shot said, offering her a way to move on without saying it. But this needed to hit the air.

"We all thought it was Jubei, until he got his head smashed in. But I kept my ears open. Lee had been complaining of diarrhea fiercely, and slowed us down, but we couldn't leave him. He was family. But at the same time, we gave him plenty of room to do what he needed doing. Most of us, anyway. I started getting suspicious; not because he wasn't in the crossfire, because he was. I don't really know why I followed him. But I saw him there, talking to the man in the red armor. And I got so angry. Selling us out. For what? Money? Safety? To get adopted by some family of foreigners? At that point, it was just me, Lee, Sneers, and Jet. And I wasn't going to let that number go down any further."

Shot waited for her to continue, his lack of reaction a clear 'and what happened next?'

"I confronted him. I told him that he was out, and if he ever crossed us again, it would be the last thing he did. He played dumb. He denied everything. But I knew what I'd seen. In the end, I had him cornered, and he knew it. I thought I could just toss him out and have done. But he got this look in his eye. He started screaming at me, calling me an idiot for fighting on the losing side. Started threatening to tell them to storm in and kill the lot of us. And I wasn't going to let that happen. So I stabbed him. He was nine years old, and I stabbed him right in the heart," she said, her cheek resting upon her knuckles, which was propped against her bare knee. "To this day, I can still remember that look on his face right before I did it. He was looking at me like he was asking a question. Are you a little girl, or are you a killer? He guessed wrong," she took a deep breath. "Or maybe I did. I'm not sure anymore."

Shot nodded. "That must have been hard."

"Too easy, more like," she said. "After that, we had to hide in a cave for a month for the heat to die down. Then, we had to cross half the fucking continent to find new stomping grounds where they hadn't heard of us. That's where we picked up you, Pipsqueak and The Duke, and all the rest. Sometimes, when I sleep, I dream that I didn't do that. Who would I have been if I hadn't taken that path, Shot? Did I pick wrong? I can't keep fighting. I'm so tired."

"I understand," Shot said. And most importantly, Bi knew without a doubt that he not only meant it, but had authority to do so. "The War made monsters out of us. It's hard to be human, after that."

"What if we can't?" Bi asked, quietly. "What if we're broken? What if we can't be human anymore?"

Longshot shrugged. "Then we'll be monsters together," he said, the barest hints of a nostalgic smile on his face. He nodded out the back. "The room's back there. Make yourself comfortable."

"I am going to pay you back for this," Bi said again.

Shot gave her one last look as he left the room. The look said, if she decoded it right, 'Seeing you're still alive is payment enough'.

For the first time in years, Bi Bei wasn't alone.

* * *

Azula was actually the one to push her way to the front of the horde, an odd thing considering that as little as seven years ago, she had devoted herself to killing him. But now, she had quite the opposite reaction upon seeing him in such dire straits. Instead of feeling jubilation and joy, she felt worry and failure. She had promised to prevent exactly this sort of thing from happening. And the moment she shut her eyes for a few hours of sleep, it happens again. "What is his condition?" she said to the few assembled inside a wall of soldiers. The room was on a line between the Fire Court and the infirmary, and they had simply let him down here rather than bother take him the rest of the way.

"Poor but stable," Ked answered. He reached over and gave her hand a squeeze, which while pointless, gave her a moment of much needed comfort. "He's in no condition to fight."

Azula sighed. "So much for that plan," she looked at her brother again. "But he is going to be alright?"

"Give him a few days, yes. But right now?" Ked gave a glance to Ursa, who was beside herself. Azula could understand why. To that woman, it would be as though all of her worst fears had suddenly come to fruition. Luckily, the combined efforts of a pair of Tribesmen relegated an assassination into an attempted assassination. "So what do we do now?"

Azula pondered for a moment, looking at those assembled. A notion came to her. "Much of the plan can be salvaged. My role is for the most part unchanged. But with Zuko's a gaping void... I fear we're going to need to involve my doppelganger more than she would wish, and I dare say her part will be quite dangerous."

Sokka, leaning back against a bag of ice to the back of his frequently-dislocated shoulder, brightened a bit. "So this could still work in the end?"

Azula nodded. "Azul will not burn. We leave at sunrise. Our army awaits us."

* * *

_Wouldn't it have sucked if I cliff-hangered right at the assassination?_

_Leave a review._


	24. Nothing Golden Lasts II: From the Ashes

**Alright, since I'm not going to be able to put this up on its proper schedule day, I opted to go too soon rather than too late. Yeah, I'm a nice guy like that. Oh, and since I like being clear, there were three lessons that Azula learned over the course of this little misadventure. Might not have been the best lessons, definitely weren't the worst, but they've helped her become who she was intended to be. In this narrative, anyway. Other narratives sport different Azulae. The first two were as follows:**

**Lesson 1: People are ends, not means. Every person has nigh-infinite opportunity to grow, before the world starts to limit them. Azula is more than what Ozai tried to make her.**

**Lesson 2: There are things that are worth fighting for, even if the cost is unspeakably high. What sacrifice is worth what cost comes down entirely to the person paying it. Azula deserved to be loved, and deserves to be fought for.**

**It's been a long... wait, no it hasn't. I managed this in only a couple of months. This entire narrative has only been kicking around for 10 months in total, and it's already longer than some published series that I've read. Kind of a shame that I couldn't ever get the impetus to write _Golem_ and _Glory_ with such verve. Then I'd have some original content out in the world. Ha. As if it'd even get published. Anyway, this isn't the time to mope. It's time for Azula to be a Magnificant Bastard, Sokka to be Crazy Awesome, and somebody to make a TvTropes page for this. I only kid about the last one, because I don't know how.**

**And that third lesson? Just wait for it.**

* * *

The world was red.

The sun, peaking over the mountains to the east and casting shadows so long that they almost reached the outskirts of Azul, cast a red glow in the heavens. Ordinarily, a red sky in the morning was a dire portent of foul weather, but with the mountains leaving Azul in a stark rainshadow, the worst they would have to deal with was cold winds, and even then, not very much of them. For a moment, she considered if it would disrupt her plans. After that moment, she decided it wouldn't. They were not birds, beholden to breeze and current. They would forge through the wind. Literally.

But even as the sky was red, so too was the ground. The soil of Azul, even dry as it was now, was a shade of rusty red that betrayed its surfeit of iron. So much iron was to be found in Azul and the mountains defining it that it had been able to supply the war machine for a hundred years of conflict, and had served five hundred before that, even if at a vastly reduced capacity. There was a sort of barren aesthetic to this place. Some had called it a beautiful void. It was very dry, only its northernmost reaches getting frequent rains. Its skies were the blue for which the country took its name. As was usual for Azul, there wasn't a cloud to be seen. But that would change in a few hours. Ty Lee and the Avatar were off the coast ensuring that. Come mid-morning, the sky would be overcast. All according to the scenario.

"Is that everybody?" Sokka asked, staring out across the distances, a lens to his eye. "Man, it's like they called in everybody from Azul. This isn't going to be easy."

"None of us went into this expecting it would be easy," Azula pointed out. "Are you sure you're up to your task?"

Sokka gave the firebender a weighing look, then nodded. "I kinda have to be," he said. "Nobody knows how to wreck Fire Nation equipment better than I do," he looked over to the airships which were close to the ground. There weren't many of them. "I'd give a lot for more air support, though. They've been swatting down our rigs like swamp-flies."

"We'll have to make due," Azula stressed. "I am not happy with the role that I've been forced into either, but if this is going to work, to bring this war to an end, we need to decapitate them in a deft stroke."

"I'd bet cash money that Jeong Jeong's probably at The Factory," Sokka said. "Long Feng, I leave to you."

"How magnanimous of you."

Sokka looked out at that ugly city, lying between the hills. "Do you really think this is going to work? Do you really think she'll hold up?"

"We can only hope," Azula said, a smirk showcasing the hint of sarcasm she injected into the words. She turned and walked past where the other of her original two bodyguards was waiting, focus plain on his features. He had his own things to worry about, so she didn't fault him for not noting her presence. Chan had his own part to play in this. She moved past him, and ducked into the tent which had been hastily set up overlooking where the armies would no doubt clash. It had been a long time since Fire Nation fought Fire Nation. And Azula didn't like that it was happening at all one bit.

She saw the man she was hoping to when her eyes adjusted to the relative darkness inside. A small smile came to her face. "It's almost time," Azula said. Ked nodded, and she pulled him into a brief embrace, and an even briefer kiss. "Make sure you come back alive. If you get yourself killed, I'll have to make your ghost miserable. And believe me, I will find a means to do so."

"I don't doubt that for an instant," Ked said, parting slowly but still holding her hands. "I hate that this has to happen. You shouldn't have to fight."

Azula's smile became akin to her predatory smirk. "Oh, that's the beauty of this plan. If all goes well, there won't be any fighting at all."

"_If_ all goes to plan."

Azula sighed. "I just pulled a Sokka and jinxed it, didn't I?"

"Very likely," he answered. He looked at her again, that way he did which made her seem like the most valuable thing on the face of the Earth. She liked when he looked at her like that. But she had places to go. A squeeze of his hand, and then she departed. He was going come back to her alive if it was the last thing he did.

She returned to the bright red world, putting on her spectacles for what might be the last time today. It really depended on how things went. For the first time in her life, she actually had hope that it wouldn't turn out as horribly as she had planned for. That things might not go according to plan, but still not be an utter disaster despite it.

She took a deep breath. There was a level of peace which came from knowing that the battle was in the air. A clarity and focus which let her see through all of the rest of the things which tried desperately to send Azula into a screaming frenzy. Like the human now growing in her lower abdomen. She pointedly thought of something other than that. Despite Ked's protestations to the counter, she still had no faith that she could be anything but a terrible mother. Much like trying not to think of a platypus bear made one think of a platypus bear, she now was mired enough in her own maternal doubts that she never noticed the waterbender approaching until there was no escape which wasn't an embarrassing scramble into an airship.

"What do you want?" Azula asked.

"It's... been made apparent... that I've been less than civil with you," Katara said tightly.

"I see," Azula said.

There was a long moment of silence. "Well?" the waterbender asked.

"To be honest, I cannot say that I care," Azula said. "I owe amends to those that I've hurt. That means I owe my brother, I owe my friends. One could even stretch the facts a bit and say that I owe the Avatar for that time when I killed him. But I struggle to conceive of anything which I directly did to you."

"You are such a..." Katara began.

"Raging bitch? Join the club. Even your brother agrees that you're a shoo-in for membership," Azula said, a smirk appearing on her face. Katara fumed. "Obviously his humor managed to avoid you completely. Which is a shame, because it makes it far easier to deal with him."

"Why do you keep antagonizing us?"

"I antagonize _you_, because I find it funny," Azula said. She sighed. "But the fact is, I'm sick of fighting all the time. Do you know what it's like to grow up, told that war is the only thing that you're ever going to be capable of? To be moulded into a soldier from the time when most children are learning to read? I doubt it. You were just the only prodigy for a lost art. You chose war. I didn't," she stared into the distance, to the city on the horizon. "I dare say I had far fewer options growing up than you ever did."

"So why did you fight so hard? Why did you try so long to kill us all?" Katara asked. And to her credit, it actually sounded like she was speaking with genuine interest.

"Because I didn't see any other way of being. And the things he made me do, I regretted. I make a point of not doing things I know I'll regret. I resent that he did that to me. Almost as much as I resent who he tried to make me."

Katara stared at her for a moment, golden eyes locked with blue. "You're _really_ trying. You _want_ Zuko to win this war."

"If I say yes, you accuse me of lying. If I say no, it confirms every doubt you've ever held. The fact is, I don't care if Zuko wins or fails, so long as I can keep him safe, like I promised my mother. The former is simply a far better option for all involved," Azula turned to the city in the distance again, fiddling with her spectacles again. At least she wasn't biting her nails anymore. "My family is whole again. I don't intend to lose that."

Katara let out a sigh, like pressure years in the accumulation was finally being released. "I understand that feeling completely."

Silence stretched once more.

"You're about to threaten me of what you're going to do if I decide to turn evil, aren't you?" Azula asked.

"I don't need to," Katara said. "Besides, we both know, it wouldn't be a threat, but a guarantee. Everybody else seems to trust you. I don't know why, but they've let you in. For once, I'm going to shelve that instinct telling me to put you under a microscope, because I have to believe they aren't all complete idiots."

"Some of them, anyway," Azula said.

Katara set her jaw. "You're making it very hard to be civil to you."

"I am told that I'm an acquired taste," Azula said.

"I'd like to believe you. I'd like to be able to just turn my back on you and know you won't put a knife in it. I still have the scar from the last time you took a knife to me," she said, rubbing at her collar bone.

"That war gave us all scars," Azula said, letting the sleeve drop and show the tears in her forearms that reached from elbow to wrist.

She stared at the firebender. "You want me to trust that you're on our side? Prove it. Prove that you're not the woman who tried to kill the world's last hope for peace."

Azula felt a scowl pull at her face. "I'm only going to say this once. I have nothing to prove to you. I'm doing this for my own reasons. And to be perfectly frank, I could care less about you and your paramour the Avatar. Now leave me alone. I can't be seen with you right now."

Katara glared at her, but the firebender ignored her. She had no intention of making nice nor making friends. She had enough of those, at the moment. She had much bigger things to worry about. Like a fetus. No, ignore the fetus. Fetus is not worth attention at the moment! No, bigger things to worry about like a battle on the horizon. She took a deep breath, pulled off her spectacles, and slipped them into a case which she hid in her dark red robes. This was going to get difficult. At least she wasn't fighting alone. That thought rotated in her mind, drowning out the rest of it. Azula was worth fighting for. Azula wasn't alone.

* * *

**Chapter 24: Nothing Golden Lasts II**

**From the Ashes**

* * *

Jee was not happy with how the last fortnight had gone. His intention had been so simple. To report back to Ursa what was happening in the Fire Lord's court. But he leaves, sneaking through the siege lines, just before they bomb out the bridge to the north, and things fly out of control. He had to pilot a skiff all the way along the southern edge of the Hui jungle, all the way to Hui Lo, where he could charter a ship to the south. All that work to avoid Ember, and the navies of the Blue Flame.

And then, when he finally, finally gets to Great Whales, everybody at the Palas yr Llyswennod treated him like they'd never seen him before. It took him days to sort out an appointment with the Empress, only to find that she'd arranged things so that he would be delayed as long as possible, because she'd already departed for the Fire Nation, rendering the last week and a half moot. And worse than that, the ship that he snuck back into the Fire Nation upon took a leak and almost foundered off the coast of Duan Hu. Sixteen days, to absolutely no good worth. And now, he limped back into Grand Fire, at least a bit damp, stinking of fish and burnt oil, as untidy as he had been when he was living in a damned swamp.

Jee was not happy, because it had been a terrible fortnight. It more reminded him of his time on Iroh's ship than it had as Zuko's adviser and ambassador. Those were not pleasant memories. But he was back. He had to travel through the night and arrived without a chance to bathe. But he bore news of a sort. Great Whales was mobilizing. He distinctly hoped that Ursa wasn't thinking with her heart instead of her mind. Because that would only end poorly for the young Fire Lord. He was about to flag somebody down, when he noticed the atmosphere in the palace. Tension. The sort of mortal tension that Jee had only felt one time, the morning after somebody killed his commander. He'd gotten the immediate blame for it, since the two of them had come to blows numerous times. That it turned out to have been his horribly abused wife who ended him didn't ameliorate the treatment that Jee had gotten, ending with him being drummed out of the navy in disgrace. It was the tension of fear, the tension of murder.

"Servant, a word?" Jee said. The amber eyed girl seemed a bit confounded that somebody as momentarily filthy as Jee would demand her attention. It was lucky he hadn't been born to stature, because he would have probably been much more haughty and insufferable. Instead, he was just impatient. He produced his Royal Seal. "I need to speak to the Fire Lord at once. Where is he?"

"Is that real?" the girl asked. Jee gave her a look which made it perfectly clear that he was not joking. "Oh, I'm sorry. He's in the infirmary. There was an attempt on his life a few hours ago."

"Assassination?" Jee asked urgently. "Is he awake? Can I speak to him?"

"He's resting," she said. "Infirmary. Excuse me, I'm very busy."

The girl gave a brief bow and departed in due haste. No wonder there was that tension. Somebody tried to bump off the Fire Lord. Jee knew the palace well enough, for the five years he spent in and around it, that finding the infirmary was no great chore. And pleasing to his eye, he found it very well guarded. The guards weren't just Imperial firebenders, although they made a strong showing; there were also coppery-haired Whaleshmen amongst them. That brought a moment of concern. Did Zuko know nothing of the importance of self-reliance on a political stage?

"Ambassador Jee?" one of the Whaleshman said, even as Jee had barely opened his mouth. Wait. Reuven?

"What are you doing here?"

"The Uhlans are under contract with the Empress' daughter," he said. That was a relief. Mercenaries could pretty much go as they pleased, so long as the money painted the right trail. "The Fire Lord no doubt wishes to speak to you. Come in."

Jee quickly entered the room. Contrary to his expectation, it smelled neither of blood nor burnt flesh. In fact, the Fire Lord didn't even show any bandaging, stripped to the waist and quite pale, but otherwise in good trim. Well, also looking like he needed to sleep for a month. His wife, elder daughter and his son were all clustered around the cot. He winced, looking at Jee as he entered the room. "Been a while, Jee. How was Great Whales?"

"A wild sparrow goose chase," Jee said. Trying to keep his tone steady, he continued. "Somebody could have told me that the Empress was... visiting."

"Yes, we could have," Zuko said. He winced, pushing himself to a sit, swinging his legs off the bed. "You picked a fine time to return. My sister is in the west, trying to end a war. Our armies are dedicated to a definitive battle which I'm not sure we can win."

"Only those on the losing side hope for a definitive battle," Jee pointed out. "So stop calling it that."

"I'll defer to your superior military knowledge," Zuko said, his tired voice laden with sarcasm.

"What happened here?"

The Fire Lord got a measured look on his weary face. "Somebody shot me a few times. Luckily, I had 'the best healer on the face of the planet' right on hand," There was a sardonic smirk when he said that. But then he winced. "Still, I _feel_ like I've been shot. So I'm cooling my heels in bed while the future of my nation gets decided without me."

"And the Empress?"

Zuko nodded. "I have been... introduced," he said carefully. So Ursa's curse was finally lifted? Well, good for her. Zuko shifted off of the bed. "My sister has a plan to break the cohesion of the Blue Flame. I have to trust it'll work."

"Oh, I see. Show the world that this civil war isn't a civil war, and then there's nothing wrong with outside intervention," Jee understood the situation. Zuko got to his feet, prompting an unhappy 'ahem' from his wife.

"I'm alright," Zuko said. "I'm half-dead, not entirely dead."

"What is there to do now?" Jee asked.

"Not much," Zuko said, taking a few steps closer to Jee. "Now, do understand that I still value your council quite highly and I am not terminating your services, but I must say, you really do deserve this."

"Deserve what?" Jee asked. Zuko answered by punching him very hard in the stomach. Jee's breath fled him in a rush, and he staggered back against the wall, and slid down to a sit. Zuko turned and went back to the bed. When Jee got his breath back, he looked up. "Was that because I'm having an affair with your mother, or because I knew where she was for seven years and didn't tell you?"

"Yes," Zuko answered, lowering himself back into bed.

Yup. This was a terrible, terrible fortnight.

* * *

Clouds over Azul were a sight that would have struck locals as odd, especially at this time of year. Over the city itself, doubly strange. The city of Azul was on a river, granted, but so little rain fell over the city that most of its windows were only lined with paper, leaving glass to more productive uses. The clouds that the Avatar and Sokka's prodigious airbending spouse had summoned up from the sea, and spread out across the skies, respectively, weren't rain clouds. That would have required much more effort, and didn't actually help his plan. Sokka only needed to make it impossible to see what was coming from above. While the Red Flame was desperately hurting for manpower, it still held the advantage of aerial superiority. And more so than the Blue Flame could have imagined.

"Is this the spot?" Sokka asked through the driving winds which forced the clouds to blanket the sky. Ty Lee was going to be tired when she was done today. No doubt about that at all. The pilot, young Shoji from his last flight over Hachiman, poured over the maps, checking various displays and gauges.

"If it's not, we're within a quarter mile. You'll be well within the city limits," Shoji pointed out. He rose from his squat and took the wheel once again. "This is insane, you must realize that."

Sokka got a grin on his face. "As I see it, anything which takes an engineer to build, can only properly be broken by an engineer. At least, broken so it can't be repaired with any sort of haste. Besides, they all know how to brain an idiot with a wrench if push comes to shove," Sokka pointed out.

"That's not the crazy part," Shoji muttered. Sokka knew exactly what the pilot was talking about, but didn't comment, instead leaving the helm and descending into the bomb bays. They were waiting down there, twenty four in number. Most of them had been engineers conscripted into Ozai's army, and quite relieved that they could retire under Zuko. But with the civil war, it had been easy for Sokka to round them up again for one last glorious misadventure.

Sokka pulled on the backpack that the others were wearing, and addressed them all. "Lady and gentlemen, we're about to jump out of a perfectly good airship into the heart of enemy territory," Sokka said. The others glanced amongst themselves. "But believe me, everything's going to be fine. As long as you don't freeze up and forget to open your parachutes, you'll hit the ground about as hard as if you jumped off a ladder."

A hand rose up.

"Not your ladder, Bing," Sokka preempted. Bing had the dubious distinction of having to refill lanterns on the southern message stations, a task made perilous by long ladders, naked to driving winds and splashing surf. Sokka turned to them all. "Last chance to back out. Any takers?" resolute faces stared at him. "Great. We converge on the airship factory in the Ocaso district."

"Ready, Lord Baihu?" the bombardier asked. Sokka's grin was all the answer that he needed to give.

There was a loud, metal clunk, and the floor dropped out from under the lot of them. Every single one of them was screaming as they plummeted through the veil of clouds. But Sokka, unlike the others, was shouting in pure and innocent excitement. The city loomed as the clouds gave way, and Sokka tore open the pack at his back. A snap of lines and a desaturated pink parasol erupted above him, sharply slowing his descent. He had to trust Teo's observation that pink was almost invisible against clouds, because otherwise, this whole mission was going to be nasty, brutish, and short. He looked at the squat, dirty buildings moving up toward his feet at a slightly more sedate pace, and then to one side. The sole female engineer who joined the troupe was also drifting sedately down, even if she did look a bit green of complexion.

"See? Was that so hard?" Sokka shouted across the distance. He was given a rude gesture in response.

* * *

Long Feng was not happy how things had turned out. The lack of news from Grand Fire was at the least somewhat hopeful. While he didn't believe that Han Hua would succeed, even if he didn't, he would at least do Long Feng the favor of dying and no longer impinging on the perfection of his plans. Well, perfection was no longer the proper word for what Long Feng's aspirations had become. They had once been perfect. They had once been beautiful and elegant and devious. Now, half of the plan was in ashes, and the other half actively on fire. But Long Feng was a man renowned from his youth in turning a bad situation to his favor. It was just a matter of weathering the backlash that the idiot Jeong Jeong incurred from Azul, and rebuilding.

But all of that was put into jeopardy, because somebody had asked for parlay. With him. Specifically. Long Feng didn't need to guess twice to deduce who it would be. So he made plans.

The tent had been erected in the distant foothills outside Azul. It was almost equidistant to both forces. Red Flame in the mountains, Blue Flame in the city, and Long Feng straddling the two. Exactly where he was at his most dangerous, actually. The tent had not been erect long, nor he secreted inside it for any duration, when the flap fluttered open, and four figures clad in red robes entered. If Long Feng had his facts straight, those were robes of Fire Sages. Long Feng did not motion for the Dai Li he had in wait. There were enough of them that they could together bury this tent so completely that a god could search for a thousand years and not even find one's soul. Of course, this was a resort he would prefer not to employ.

"Very few know my name in this age," Long Feng said evenly. "Even fewer know that I am still alive."

"But for those that do, it should come as no surprise to find you here," that voice answered. It took less than a heartbeat, closer to the instantaneous zap of a synapse, for the gravity to settle upon Long Feng, as he recognized the Princess' voice. She casually flicked back her hood, and those with her did likewise. One was shaven headed, and quite old. The other pale, and of narrow, scowling face and piercing golden eyes. The last was that infernal doctor, the one who refused to have the decency to die when Long Feng demanded it. Even the garrison at Betla wasn't enough to stop him.

"You look different," Long Feng said without intonation. It was true. Her face was marred by ripples of scars. Her expression was darker, as was her complexion. She was wearier, warier, and angrier. And most stark, she now wore spectacle lenses before her eyes. But that voice? There was almost nobody else with that voice.

"You had some small part to play in that," the Princess said caustically. And the one person who shared that voice, had none of the real Azula's attitude.

"Not I," Long Feng said. "I would have simply killed you. I have no intention to see you suffer. Simply die. What Jeong Jeong did was... brutish and uncivil."

"I'm so relieved that were I in your hands, I would have simply been murdered," the woman said sarcastically, that smirk on her face. The smirk vanished quite quickly. "This is going to end. Right now."

"Oh?" Long Feng asked.

"This game has gone on long enough. I have grown tired of it," Azula said. She gave a glance to the rat-like man at her side. "I have what I need to verify beyond all reasonable doubt that the woman you found to replace me is not the genuine article."

"The Embiar will not believe the Fire Sages," Long Feng dismissed.

"Perhaps not," Fire Sage Shyu admitted, rubbing a hand over his bald pate. He gave a glance to the younger man. "But they are a superstitious lot. And they will believe the legends of the Hui."

"They will believe what I want them to," Long Feng interjected forcefully.

That smirk returned. "You know less about the people you're trying to secretly rule than I could have thought possible. This is Oméeotl, the master of rituals of the Sun Warriors," she introduced. Oméeotl gave a nod, but the angry look on his face did not fade one whit. "The legends of the Sun Warriors are strong amongst the Duan, doubly so because of the Sozu who overtook them. But there are no few who speak of their wonders in Ember. The Fire Sages might be seen as lackey's for my brother. But the Sun Warriors? Their word will be utterly beyond reproach. Face it, Long Feng. You've lost this game. Accept it with dignity."

Long Feng growled to himself. "I have lost nothing yet. Your army will not stand against ours. With Azul ashes behind us, I will be able to direct its full force against you, and with your own force in the state it is, they will not be able to withstand us."

"This is the only offer I'm going to make you," Azula said. "Because after this, it will go badly for you."

"Your confidence is ill founded and your threats are as empty as your future," Long Feng answered. "With one word, I can slay you all where you stand."

"And with my silence, you will not leave this tent alive," Azula countered. That damned smirk reappeared. "You will not disarm, I can assume?"

"I do not forfeit anything I have easily."

"You always were a possessive son of a bitch," the Tribesman noted without humor.

"Then I will take this up with my former Firemaster," she turned, to depart from the tent. Long Feng cleared his throat, to say the words which would end her where she stood. "Oh, and one more thing," she said, throwing that damned smirk over her shoulder. "You can say goodbye to your precious army."

"What?" Long Feng asked. She just chuckled to herself as she departed. A part of Long Feng's mind, a hopelessly naïve part, wanted to say the words and strike her down. But the part of him forged in a thousand conspiracies urged him to caution. She was an extremely canny opponent. She had plans for his plans. And she doubtless had something in mind for if he acted without proper deliberation. That's all this was. Trying to shake him. Throw him off his game.

Long Feng's green eyes narrowed. Let her go, this time. He would not blunder into this obvious trap. But now, he had to wonder what Azula meant by that last utterance. There was no way she could break his army, not by force of arms. But then, a notion occurred to him. Perhaps she intended by some other means. He wouldn't put it past her.

"Agent. Keep watch on that woman. Do not let her out of your sight for even an instant. Is that clear?" Long Feng said.

A Dai Li, who had hidden himself in the shadows, stepped forward. "As you command, sir."

Long Feng turned and opened the passage that he intended to use the whole time to escape, and made his way back to Azul, walking along a claustrophobic passage lit by green crystals. The greatest game had started, and his most worthy opponent sat opposite him. He just had to be a move a head of her.

And a niggling doubt in the back of his mind, wondered if the opposite was true.

* * *

She moved a bit closer to the Tribesman as the group of four vacated the tent, and walked back toward the Red Flame force unmolested. She leaned a little bit closer and spoke with tones hushed to the point where the wind almost managed to swallow them in the short distance from her bright red lips to his ear. "Do you think he bought it?" she asked.

Ked smirked for a moment. "Let's hope he did."

* * *

Toph shifted her bare sole on the metal plate under her stool. The distance was quite large between where she was sitting and where the actual battle took place. Ordinarily, it would have been well outside her sphere of 'vision'. But Loverboy had come up with a clever idea, one which opened up her sensorum to a frankly disorienting degree. She held her young son on her lap, and pointed out across that great distance.

"Now, you can see this a lot better than I can," Toph said. "Even though your eyes are all tiny and undeveloped, you can probably make out all of the red and the blue out there, am I right?"

"Glah?" Huang inquired.

"Exactly. Now we're the red ones, and that makes us the good guys, and the one all by herself with a tidal wave at her command is Katara. Don't piss her off. She's kinda scary," Toph said, gesturing to the closer of the two groups. The only reason she could make out anything that far away was because of the long, slender wire which had been helpfully dragged across the intervening distance by a soldier at the back of the rank. As it was, having more than a mile of 'vision' was quite simply too much for her to process, so she prioritized, ignoring anything smaller than a hogmonkey. What she gained in distance, she lost in resolution. "And the ones on the other side? The ones in blue? They're the bad guys and that means it's all right for us to smash them."

"Bar-barp!" Huang proclaimed.

"Now, I'm told that there's clouds in the sky," Toph said. "It's certainly windy enough to have a storm blowing in, but anyway..." she pointed up. "We've got a bit of a nasty surprise waiting up there for the right moment to strike. Can you say 'ambush', Huang?"

"Armbahg?" the child babbled.

"Close enough," Toph shrugged. It bloody figured that the only thing which would get Huang to stop crying was a goddamned warzone. As it was, the fruit of her loins sat with rapt attention, staring at everything from the Spooks she had surrounding her, to the tablecloth under her sandwich, and even the battle in the distance. "Now, you see, if the red guys lose, that means a pal of mine gets his ass thrown to the curb, and we don't want that. So we are gonna thrash the blue guys good."

"Arb-barbah!"

"You got that right," Toph said, ignoring the fact that it was jibberish and applauding the enthusiasm by which it was offered. Shifting up from her foot, she could 'see' the great form of the Red Flame army begin to buckle, its force beginning to part as the Blue pressed at a weak point. The soldiers began to fall back, and then to outright flee. A hole had opened, and the Blue Flame sent an entire squad of Rhino cavalry into that breach, charging straight into a knot of commanders.

"And right there? That's showing that Zuko actually has some balls," Toph said. "I never figured he'd have the stomach to actually do it, but if they fu... messed with Azula the way I think they did, then, well, they deserve what they're getting."

"Bahs?"

"Madam Earth King, is it really wise to stay this close to the conflict?" one of her Spooks asked her. In truth, their name was some acronym that she had Suki come up with when she was still in Ba Sing Se, but by Toph's reckoning, any name which had a 'Q' in it and wasn't attached to a Tribesman wasn't worth learning. Thus, she just called them 'her Spooks'. She leaned back, to show the man exactly the level of derision that his outburst had prompted.

"Nobody can see me and nothing's going to fly this far. Chill the f... hell out," Toph said, once again moderating herself so that her son wouldn't pick up profanity for his first coherent word. It wasn't easy. She pointed at the Red Flame line, which was quickly reconstituting itself, with that knot of Blue Flame cavalry at its back. The Rhinos, having feasted upon those stiff-backed and empty-headed Old Guard from Ozai's rule, now turned and raced toward the backs of the Red Flame line, ready to sow more havoc. A smile came to Toph's face. "Wait for it," Toph prompted, raising a finger. Oh, what she would have given to have working eyes, if only for the next five seconds.

"I see them, Ma'am," another of the Spooks said.

"Don't spoil it!" Toph snapped. Even as the words exited her mouth, the Rhinos balked, their charge stopped by nothing that she could see. But she could feel fire. Lots and lots of fire. It was a moment later that she felt one of them land. It was massive, a beast four times as long as Appa, a sinuous body of scales and fire, and on its back was a host of lean, canny fighters who bounded off to fight afoot. All down the line, between the cavalry and the Red Flame, this same process repeated itself, as a portion of the Sun Warriors force, borne on the backs of dragons, descended to drop its hussars and return to the fight. The entire Blue Flame line buckled, driven back a solid measure, as the dragons – red she had been assured – began to lay fire upon their positions and lash out with such fury and rancor could only come from the first Firebenders on this Earth.

"Ain't it a glorious thing?" Toph said. "And if you're lucky, you'll never have to see this again."

"Doos bahg?" Huang asked. Toph sighed.

"Goddamn it," Toph muttered. Teo was going to give her hell about this.

"Damn it!" Huang cheerfully agreed. Toph rolled her eyes, and 'watched' as the Sun Warriors brought their dragons into war, on the side of the Red Flame.

* * *

Sokka gave a glance up and down the street, but found it thankfully quite bereft of most soldiery, who had been pulled out to deal with the very real threat of Zuko's combined forces out in the foothills. A grin came to his face when he saw those majestic beasts soared above the combat, raining down fire and occasionally firebenders. Even still, it pulled a wince to his face on the odd occasion one of them was struck by catapult fire and sent crashing to the earth. He turned back to his corps. Twenty engineers. Well, twenty engineers and one Tribesman, so it would have to do. He darted across the street, hunched low and ears perked for any indication of notice. None. Nothing but the sound of warfare in the distance, an indistinct buzz of voices and crashes and explosions. He turned, waving his group over.

"Now what? There's a wall between us and the factory," one of them pointed out. Sokka though, shook his head.

"Really? We're going to get stopped by a wall?" he asked.

"The other ways are still guarded, there's no way we're all making it over this thing without being seen, and if we try to break it down, they will hear us," a particularly 'optimisitic' member of the group pointed out. Sokka reached over and rapped him on the head with his knuckles.

"They'll hear us, if we take too long. The trick is finding the weakest point, and attacking there. Never attack where the defense is strongest, that's just idiocy," Sokka said. He reached up one hand to the wall, but the other, he surreptitiously drew out some of the water from his brine flask into a ball, secreted in his palm. When he touched the rough, cemented stone, he forced that water through its tiny pores. He flexed his hand open and shut, freezing and thawing the water, then refreezing it further in.

"You can't bring down a wall like this fast enough to avoid notice," the optimist said.

But Sokka intended exactly that. Every flex of his hand sapped the superstructure of the stone just a little bit more, weakened it without any visible sign, until it was more a suggestion of a wall than a thing of substance. Sokka smirked, and released the water, pointing at a spot in the middle of his clandestine ministrations. "That's the weak point of this thing. Sledge?" he asked. A large hammer was handed to him. "You see, it's all about proper application of force in the right area. Anything less is..."

"Tearing down a wall with a sledgehammer?" The sole woman asked sardonically.

"Well, we'll see who's laughing when we stroll in utterly unnoticed by the Blues," Sokka said confidently. He took a heavy swing, and slammed the head into the stone. Obediently, the undermined rock crumbled, throwing up dust and creating a hole which might need to be squeezed through by the more portly members of his troupe, but was a serviceable entrance nonetheless. "See? What was wrong with that?" Sokka asked.

And they were pointing past him, their faces gone pale. Sokka turned. As the dust cleared, he beheld a group of four firebenders in bright blue armor, staring at the hole, utterly stunned. Sokka let out an aggravated sigh. Of course a patrol _just happened_ to be walking past. He turned to his subordinates with an aggravated look on his face.

"What did I tell you?" he shouted. "This is the wrong wall! They want the door three streets that way!"

"It's the Tribesman! Kill him!" the Blue shouted.

"Ah, well, worth a shot," Sokka muttered, then hurled the hammer through the breach at knee level, scattering them and cracking one of them so brutally that there was a sickening pop as the leg buckled. "Y'all know what you have to do, so go and do it!" Sokka shouted. "I'll distract them!"

"The Tribesman is here! Sound the alarms!" a voice cried out, and klaxons answered him. Sokka drew his master's blade. He had never gotten a chance to give it a proper reforging from the last battle he'd fought, a few miles away from here, a few days ago. He silently asked the weapon to last him one more day, despite its battered state, and with a smirk on his face, Sokka Baihu brought war to The Factory.

* * *

Ty Lee was exhausted, covered in sweat, and felt like she was half-way dead. As such, the smile on her face hung almost as low as a frown, only its intention holding it apart. But considering that she'd just counteracted weather itself for a small portion of a continent, without the notable benefit of being the Avatar, she had good reason to be proud of herself.

"I think that's all I've got left in me," Ty Lee admitted, at a shout to carry it across the gap between the two hovering bison. Basu had long become impatient, and was flicking his tail and ears, waiting for something interesting to do. Appa, on the other hand, was quite content to simply float, the Avatar glowing menacingly on the howdah as he pulled water up from the sea, pulled it into vapor, and let it be seeded on her winds.

"**Then go,**" the chorus of voices answered her. "**You have done more than enough. The rains shall fall on Azul.**"

"Is this going to work?" Ty Lee asked.

"**It has to,**" the Avatar answered her. "**Go to her. She will need you.**"

As much as Ty Lee wanted to give the Avatar a parting hug, she was fairly sure that physically, she simply didn't have the energy left. It was an odd sensation. She slumped onto Basu's brow, and patted the thick, white fur. "Alright, Basu. Let's get back to the city. Give'r, Basu!"

Basu let out a bass growl, and flew east, toward the coastal city of Azul.

* * *

"How long?" Jeong Jeong demanded.

"Take off can take place at your discretion," one of the Dai Li said unemotionally. There were only five ships, but each one of them had a payload which could wipe out most of a city. And now, they were finally ready.

"Good. Where is Mongke?" Jeong Jeong demanded.

"I'm right here. Don't piss yourself," the soldier muttered. "We've got a bit of a security problem."

"Seal it," Jeong Jeong demanded. "We're launching the airships now."

"Then get aboard, and we'll roast this shithole," Mongke said.

"You will be personally overseeing the bombardment," Jeong Jeong ordered. "I have other tasks requiring my attention."

"Whatever you say," he said. "Lead on, butter-head."

The Dai Li did not react to the slur, but began to show the way to the closest and best stocked of the airships, the first of their fleet. It had been this single airship which had survived from the fall of Ozai's empire. Odd, that it would see the death of the entire country of Azul after all this time. There had been a time, some thirty years ago, when he might have questioned whether this was going too far. The long years of bitterness and repressed rage had long since scoured those doubts away. Nothing less than annihilation was good enough for the progeny of Azulon. And when they fell, Jeong Jeong could then turn his eyes on other inconveniences. Like Long Feng.

The Firemaster left the offices, moving along the catwalks which hung in the vast edifice. Usually, chambers like this could only be found in palaces. Azul, though, had perverted such architecture towards assembly. It was sensible. It was practical. And Jeong Jeong hated it. Keeping those grumbled words to himself, he opened up a door which emptied onto a high balcony on what was the largest factory in Azul. Not simply the largest, it was the definitive factory. So much the case, in fact, that they hadn't bother naming it, instead opting to put a capitalized 'The' in front of it and refer to it as such. It was also, odd as it was to say, the highest structure in the Azuli skyline. What they gained in poetry and grace, they easily forfeited in architecture, there was of that no doubt.

Jeong Jeong moved around the bulk of the building, which continued still well above the balcony he stood, until he rounded the building's corner, and could behold the battle, a mile away in the distance. Nobody fought in a city if they could manage it. To do so was utterly mad, a meatgrinder of fire and death and wanton destruction. That didn't bother Jeong Jeong in this case. Rather, he kept them away so that when Azul was reduced to ashes and scrap iron, he'd still have an army. But they were closer than they should have been. His dark golden eyes narrowed, pulling at the scars running down his face. He pulled a lens from his long, dark red coat and held it to his eye.

The Blue Flame had fallen back. The Red had let them shift backwards, and a lull had fallen in the battle as both sides caught their breath and prepared for the next assault. What could have caused that sort of reversal? That the Red Flame hadn't broken was annoying in the extreme. Jeong Jeong had been assured that the Red Flame's armies were a shambles. He needed to get closer. Denying his body's age and stiffness, he bounded off of the balcony, using a firebent stream to rocket him a short distance along that ugly, ugly skyline, closer to the edge of the city, to the never-completed wall, to the roads. He landed with a shard of pain that worked its way from his hip all the way up his spine into the back of his eyes. He was old, but he was not finished yet. He would see the end of that family, even if it killed him.

There. Now he saw what Zuko's game was. He didn't understand how it could be possible, but he saw it. Dragons. Hundreds of them, all as bright red as living flame. Or as red as blood, as one's taste would dictate. There was only one who defied that color scheme, and it was the largest of them, the same electric blue as the real Azula's flames. The beasts now stood at the front of the Red Flame's army, like an array of siege engines waiting to be deployed. And it also explained why so few of the Blue Flame's actual siege engines were intact. Dragons had no respect for formations nor terrain.

Something was off. He leaned down, despite the aching of his weary body, and picked something up off the rooftop he was standing on. Caught in the corrugated metal of the roof, were long clumps of white hair. His eyes widened as the implication hit home. He brought up the lens again, just in time to see her. The impostor. Right at the head of the army. His rage ratcheted up even higher. He turned and grabbed the collar of a Dai Li agent who he didn't even need to see to know had followed him to this rooftop.

"Send everybody to kill that little bitch, right now," Jeong Jeong ordered.

"Excuse me?" the Dai Li asked.

"EVERYBODY!" Jeong Jeong gave him a rude shove, which almost sent the agent over over the edge. She managed to catch herself, though, and for just a moment, genuine anger showed through that Dai Li mask which all of those Easterners had donned. She scowled, but she nodded.

"It will be done immediately," she said. Then, with the grating of stone footwear on concrete, she planed down and out of sight. Jeong Jeong rose his lens again. The impostor was standing before the Red Flame's army. And given her recent... escape... he didn't doubt for one instant that this was going to work to his benefit.

"Countrymen! Embiar!" the impostor said, her voice booming over even this vast distance, by a means Jeong Jeong could not comprehend. "You have been deceived!"

"Her death will not come quickly," Jeong Jeong remarked to nobody nearby.

"You fought the forces of Fire Lord Zuko under the banner of the daughter of Ozai," the impostor declared. "But in doing so, you have been following a ghost. Azula is a fiction. I am a fiction. I am not Azula. I never was. I was a puppet, put here to make you believe in your cause despite the dark force controlling you."

A din began to rise from the Blue Flame's line. It grew louder when a man wearing the colors of the Lost Hui rose his hands, and motioned toward the impostor. She opened her own hand, and red flame danced above it.

"The true Azula was an _Aoi-Honou_," the man's booming, and extremely heavily accented voice declared. "This woman controls no flames of blue. She is not the sister of the Fire Lord. She is nobody."

Jeong Jeong's teeth began to grind.

"You are gathered under a false flag. This is not a civil war," the impostor said grandiosely. "This is an invasion."

Jeong Jeong scowled at that. It was a civil war. That was beyond doubt.

"An invasion from without, using you all as unwitting pawns, as cannon fodder."

Jeong Jeong didn't like where this was going.

"An invasion by a man named Long Feng," she said.

Jeong Jeong was stunned. Erased. Erased from history. Just like last time. And this time it was even worse, because he'd had so much time to unmake this. His shock became a growl. No. No, he would not be swept aside like he had been before. He would not go quietly into that night. Jeong Jeong pulled of his pool of chi, and sent forth a blast of flame across that great distance, interrupting the woman mind-word, inciting a detonation so mighty that it reached the edge of the Blue Flame's line. He didn't care. He just wanted her silent. So Zuko had bought the actress had he? Well, he was going to personally make sure that her lies ended here and now. He could still recover this. And he could trust nobody but himself to do it.

* * *

The detonation left a ringing in her ears, and stars flitting through her vision. She hadn't even expected to get as far as she had in her little speech before the man finally lost his temper and had her assassinated. But to be honest, she had actually expected that he would have done so via Dai Li, or possibly lightning strike. A fire blast was brutal, ugly, and with herself, the High Chief Chanticuhtli, and Chan all at its destination, ineffective.

A groan caught her attention. Well, mostly ineffective. Chan didn't look well, and even Chanticuhtli looked taxed, as the lines began to converge again. But this time, it wasn't the Blue Flame doing the attacking. Her words had sown doubt, fear, and confusion. The Embiar were many things, but willing patsies? Not.

"Ow," the tired airbender said, picking herself up off the blasted ground. "That really hurt. Didn't any of you think to warn me about that?"

"You survived, didn't you?" she asked the former acrobat.

"Yeah, but it still sucked there for a second," Ty Lee muttered. She was quite the opposite of her usual self. Not perky, not energetic, and most shockingly, not happy. "Oh. Oh! Oh no! Chan is hurt!"

"I'm well aware," she said. She idly pulled the bangs of hair which framed her face, and they slid out of her way in her hand. Without any real difficulty, she threw them away. Chan was in bad shape, as he had sheltered the rest of them from the worst of the blast with his own somewhat amateurish but well intentioned firebending. She had no idea the extent of his injuries, only that he was moaning in pain and smoking slightly. So when she put her hand on his chest, it was in mostly ignorance that she let part of her own energy slide into him. His eyes snapped open, and his back arched off of the ground, fists spasming, before his skin began to reconstitute itself from the torn, burnt hamburger that it had been. After a few seconds of that brilliant light and rushing energy, he was sitting up, looking at her with a measure of awe.

"What did you do?" Chan asked.

"I saved your life," Azula said. "Now, let's just hope that your little doxie can hold Long Feng's attention. I have a mastermind to subvert. Get up. We're going hunting."

The chief of the Fire Tribe gave Azula a nod, this one of respect and consideration. He said something, which Ty Lee didn't translate, but she knew well enough from having seen its equivalent enough times that it was a hope for luck and good hunting. She answered his illegible words with a nod, and he quickly moved toward the approaching line of the Red Flame. In short order, Chanticuhtli was scooped up by the great, electric blue bulk of the mother of all dragons present, and moved back from the fight. Ty Lee was limping toward Basu, as well.

"Make it back safe," Azula ordered.

"You too, Azula," Ty Lee answered, a big if weary smile on her face.

Azula turned to Chan. "Well? Start moving, soldier!"

* * *

"Don't pull it out," Sokka said with a note of panic, as the woman gasped in pain. She had every right to. She had been just a bit impaled by the explosion that had inadvertently been set off as Sokka struggled to prevent the roof from opening, to keep the airships from escaping. The continued groaning of metal scraping against metal told him that that effort had been in vain. And had cost him most of his team. Grimly enough, the sole woman was in the best shape of them all, and she had a length of pipe through her. Luckily, though, it wasn't through anything important.

He looked up just in time to see a blade swinging toward his face. He twisted the white blade of Piandao's favorite sword up to block it, and when the two connected, the sound was wrong. Years of working around weapons had given him a keen ear. Sokka rose to his feet, twisting the dart of death around the soldier's defense and finally ramming it home through the joint at the arm. Sokka tried to pull the blade out, but as the man fell, Sokka found that the blade had bound in the armor, and with a loud ping, the blade snapped in half just shy of its mid-point. Sokka gaped at it for a long moment. His sword was broken! Damn it, he knew he should have had it reforged! Since he didn't have time to worry about that, he turned back to the woman.

"You just stay calm and somebody will scoop you up eventually. It's not like they've given up taking prisoners," Sokka said sarcastically. It was an odd habit that the most aggressive combatants in the world, the Fire Nation, also had the greatest penchant for taking prisoners. The inverse could be said about the Tribes. She seemed to take a bit of comfort in that, so he neglected the next part of his declaration, which would have been 'unless everything burns to the ground, first'.

The Factory was a massive edifice, the size of a palace. Well, a palace could probably be built inside of it and barely reach the rafters, and even managed to dwarf the seat of local authority up the hill. Not surprising, considering the amount of building going on here. Everything needed to be put into place, so there had to be room to store everything for a little while, and the machinery to move it. Sokka got a grin on his face, still clutching that half-of-a-sword as he grasped the chains that counterweighted a cannon that was in the process of being moved onto one of the airships, an airship which was now casting off moorings and beginning to rise toward the yet-opening roof. There was a thrill of acceleration as Sokka released the deadman, and the cannon plummeted. He released from the chain... to find a burly Easterner tackling him right off the side of the airship. The two of them flew sideways, slamming off of one catwalk and landing very painfully on another.

"Daaamn it, why is it always the arm?" Sokka muttered with his first breath, before taking a moment to quickly pop it back into place. The sword had landed right next to his head. A handsbreadth to the left and it would have put out his eye. He quickly gathered it up, and turned to face the man who made the admittedly quite ballsy tackle which had prevented him taking over an airship.

"I've been waiting for this, Baihu," the Easterner said.

"You knocked the pig down, did you?" a nigglingly familiar voice called from that airship. The man staring down from the rail was a man of much metal, especially about the face. And his expression was quite merciless and pitiless. It also torqued into a smirk when Sokka threw a glance at him. "Well, if it isn't 'Lord Baihu' himself," he let out an unpleasant laugh. "Ten years you've been a thorn in my side, Barbarian. Now, I get the distinct pleasure of watching you die."

"Maybe if you lived another hundred years," Sokka snarked.

"Maybe in another hundred seconds," he answered. Sokka finally realized who this bugger was. Mongke, the same guy who tried burning down Chin while Aang was getting tried for what Kyoshi did. "You see, Ogedai here, he's widely considered to be the greatest swordsman in the world."

"I practice hours every day. I hunt down every peer to prove that I'm better. You are just an insect, not worthy of the sword you hold," Ogedai said, tones flat and monotone. He pulled out his weapon, and when he did, Sokka could have scooped up his jaw with a spatula. That blade was as black as night, a singular weapon the likes of which the world had never before seen, and might never see again. It was the sword forged of the metal of a fallen star.

Space Sword.

"That's my sword," Sokka said evenly, but no small amount angrily.

"You haven't earned the right to use it," Ogedai said. "I have fought countless others, and bested every one of them with steel. I have bested the Iaijutsu masters of Duan. I have bested the Mamlukes of Si Wong. I have bested the samurai of Great Whales. And what are you?"

Sokka let out a sigh. "I'm Sokka. And you have my sword."

"Oh, just kill him already!" Mongke shouted.

Fight smarter, not harder.

"Prepare to die, Tribesman," Ogedai said.

Sokka didn't answer him. He rushed forward, as Ogedai's blade drifted into a very versatile stance. It was one Sokka felt no shame in using from time to time himself. It made it very, very hard to penetrate, while leaving many avenues for counterattack. But that was assuming that the person attacking was within sword's reach, a fundamental assumption basic to pretty much every style of swordfighting. And Sokka lived to defy assumptions. He stopped, swing his arm from behind him, and hurling the sundered sword at the enemy. Green eyes grew wide before the rough tip jabbed him in the inner thigh, prompting a ragged scream. The black metal dipped a bit, just enough. Sokka pulled his boomerang and moved closer, using the crook of metal to displace the Space Sword for just a moment, before grabbing the remnants of Piandao's blade, and tearing down, opening up the femoral artery.

Ogedai, unaware that he was already dead, lashed out, and Sokka brought up the white blade before the black could reach him. The dreadfully fatigued metal of Piandao's sword peeled like whittled wood, but kept the weapon from bisecting Sokka's face. Sokka then twisted that bit of metal which was basically a dagger at this point and slammed it through Ogedai's wrist, pinning it to the metal of the catwalk. Sokka then snatched the Space Sword before it fell the vast distance to the floor, and as he walked past, sent a final cut behind him, neatly severing the Easterner's head so that he could have at least some mercy in death. Sokka stared up at the airship, deliberately sheathing his long-estranged weapon, his eyes locked on the firebender's.

"That was amusing. What else do you have?" Sokka asked.

"Death by fire!" Mongke answered, his face contorted into rage. Sokka's eyes widened as the man sent forth a huge fan of flame, and he had to take a flying leap down a level to a catwalk which had been mostly retracted to avoid the immolation which waited above. "Where did you go, you murderous little bastard! I'll do you for that!"

Sokka glanced behind him, and when he did, he lit up with a grin which could have belonged to his wife. He turned back up to the catwalk between he and the airship. The roof finally let out a resounding clunk and fell silent, open at last. Nothing stopping them now. "You made a big mistake, Mongke!" Sokka shouted.

"Not killing you when I first saw you?" Mongke asked, as the airship he was aboard rose and pulled him back into view.

"Nah," Sokka said, still grinning. "You dropped me onto the floor with all the cannons."

Mongke seemed to run that sentence through his head a second time, before his eyes grew wide and he dashed toward the stairwell up into the bomb bays. "Rise! Rise!" he bellowed. Sokka smirked as he casually sauntered over to the cannons, pulled a wax cylinder of explosive jelly from his rucksack, and shoved it down the barrel. He followed that by an explosive warhead nearby, raised it up a bit, and struck a spark to the receiver. The bang was doubly tremendous in the enclosed space, and sent the explosive up and into one of the engines of the airship, not quite where he had hoped. Still, it made the airship that Mongke was aboard turn even as it exited the building, scraping hard against the roof to a shriek of abused metal. Sokka scowled, then kicked open the panel to the outside, grabbing a second device. The Factory had originally been intended to build battleships, thus a set of locks leading to the water, but it also meant that it was directly beside a cannon foundry, which was wonderfully efficient city planning. So wonderful, in fact, that cannons could be moved from construction to instillation by one crane trip from the second floor of their building to the fourth of The Factory. And it just so happened that one of the completed cannons was on the lift, abandoned mid transit.

"Thank you, the universe!" Sokka shouted, genuinely grateful at his luck for a change, as the airships rose over the city. But there was more groaning of metal, as the airship that had already been hit had collided with the other four, and was now shepherding them together in a great mass, turning them slowly out toward the water. This would require some more precise aiming.

* * *

"Are we clear?" Mongke asked.

"Aye," the pilot answered. "But we can't get power to the port engines, we're stuck in a spiral.

"So cut engines and let the others get clear," Mongke shouted. "Do I need to think of everything myself?"

"Cutting engines, Aye," the pilot said. Mongke, though, turned to the windows, pulling down a lens from the wall, and spying the Tribesman below. It was too late. Once the ships were free and could turn back from the bay where they had settled for the moment, Azul was as good as ash. Why was he waving? Why was that Tribesman grinning? The barbarian reached behind him and grabbed a bit of card, scribbling furiously for a moment, before holding up the result.

You really shouldn't have left me with the cannons.

"Oh, you have _got_ to be kidding me," Mongke muttered, as the Tribesman stepped aside, and fired one last time.

This time, the shot went true, landing right where Mongke wanted it the least. Right in the bomb bays, detonating every bomb and napalm charge on the airship, and reducing it to curls of metal. The blast set off each of the other airships in turn, blasting a huge hole through the cover of the clouds, and raining down debris and human death over the waters of the harbor.

The napalm on the water would burn for a week and a half. Not even a trace of a single human body was found; there wouldn't be. It was the largest explosion created by human technology, and destroyed every glass window in a mile. It reduced much of the harbor to ruins, even with the distance of the detonation, and deafened anybody on that side of the city of Azul.

Unable to hear his own chortling, lying with a broken spine and blood rilling out of his ears, Sokka Baihu could not stop laughing over broken and blown-out teeth, no matter how badly it hurt.

Oh, that was awesome.

* * *

"Where is she now?" the Grand Secretariat asked. It was the third time in ten minutes that the same question had passed his lips. Qiao managed to hide her growing unease beneath the broad rim of the sharp, conical hat which the Dai Li were finally permitted to wear once again. While it was a stark relief to wear the uniform that she had spent the first seventeen years of her life striving for, the comfort it brought her now was tempered by the tone in her master's voice.

It sounded afraid.

"She remains on the right flank, near the back line with the Azuli muster," Qiao answered.

"What does the report say?"

"There has not been time for a report," she tried to answer calmingly, but his eyes snapped at her. "Our information can only update so quickly, sir. That is a reality of open warfare."

"Do not lecture me on warfare, child. I was fighting the Fire Nation while you were in diapers," Long Feng said, somewhat defensively. He then turned to a sheet of paper. His hands rested on a pen, but the sheet was blank. Long Feng was considered many things, but ineloquent was not one of them. He stared at that blank sheet like it was mocking him, and he was impotent to stop it.

Qiao was so proud that day, when she was selected for the special training by the masters in Ba Sing Se, because she knew that only prospects for the Cultural Authority were ever given such training. Most people feared the Dai Li, but she had always admired them, for their steadfast conviction, for the way that they protected the way of life in the Earth Kingdoms. At least, that was the story she heard, the tales of the group founded by Kyoshi to protect the throne and its artifacts of history. In truth, she had even been proud when she entered their ranks, that she could be an instrument for stability and security in the greatest city on the face of this Earth.

Then, less than a year into her tenure, Ba Sing Se was invaded, and her kind were reviled. Enemies of the state. Little better than assassins in the night to the people. That was distinctly unfair. They didn't know nor appreciate what the Dai Li had sacrificed to protect them from threats that they would never know about, preventing fears which would leave them screaming in the night for the rest of their days. Enemies, both earthly, and not. Long Feng promised a return to their rightful place. He promised a glorious return to Ba Sing Se.

Then, Beifong happened. The girl-queen had appeared out of nowhere, whipping up a frenzy of support with such speed and fervor that she seemed positively Western, taking the throne through sheer brute political force. Not that Qiao saw anything wrong with that, per se. Shen the 1st had rallied the East from the Great Shift and created the first dynasty of Ba Sing Se through quite similar methods. But Beifong openly decried the Dai Li. They were cut off. Without a home.

And that grated on Qiao.

"What am I missing?" Long Feng asked very quietly. If Qiao had not been listening intently for his voice, even she would have missed it. Qiao didn't like it. Long Feng was worried. Nothing worried him. Many things irritated him, or displeased him, but worry? She hadn't thought it something in his repertoire. And most stymieing of all, she could not say one word about it. She was loyal to the master of the Dai Li. That was Long Feng. And there was nothing she could do about it.

"Where is she now?" Long Feng queried.

He was answered by the sky exploding over the water.

* * *

She had to admit, Chan was a much more useful commodity as a bodyguard than she had given him credit during their first trip through the islands of Grand Ember toward Betla. Whether it was because the man had learned something since their separation or simply because he was in a situation which more suited his talents, she could not say, but as it was, he was keeping up with her quite handily, which was a relief. The charade was hard enough to keep up as it was.

"Wait, we should take this street," Chan pointed out. Azula raised a brow. "Only an idiot removes the entire civil garrison, even when faced with an invasion. It just leaves them wide open to somebody snatching the city up from behind and locking them outside their own walls."

"And you expect this street will be less populated than that?" she asked.

Chan grit his teeth, but didn't speak. She weighed the options. A longer path with less soldiers in the way could make for an easier task, since she wouldn't be forced to keep herself operating at what amounted to a fraction of her real capabilities. It was hard enough decrying herself as an impostor. If she then showed blue flames, then her fraud would be shown to be nested, a fraud within a fraud. And that didn't help anybody. As it was, the whispers were already trickling back, and the Embiar were beginning to look upon those 'mercenaries' amongst their number with increasing distrust, increasing anger, and increasing vitriol. They wondered to themselves, was that true? Are we being duped? Are we fighting for some outsider?

Where certainty would lead to slaughter, doubt led to rout.

She pointed toward her own street. "The shorter path is preferable. Between the two of us, I have no doubts that we..." she trailed off as she beheld The Factory in the distance. More importantly, she beheld something rising up out of it. She let out an angry growl. "Damn it, Sokka, you said you had that covered!"

Chan just stared at the airships, a dread settling onto him, before he let out a sigh. "I guess that means we've got to get as many people out as possible."

"I have my own mission."

"And I won't distract you from it," Chan said. "Do what you came here for. I'll make sure somebody remembers Azul."

Azula smirked. "That actress really brought out a self-sacrificing streak in you, didn't she?"

"Have you ever been in love?" Chan asked, as he kept up with her. In truth, she had started moving simply because she knew that he would follow, even though she knew his idea was idiotic. The truth was, she needed to get closer to those ships. Lightning could only travel so far, and they were almost a mile away.

"According to most signifiers, yes, I am," Azula said. "So I know that you want to feel like you deserve the praise the woman gives you. Remember that needless self-destruction favors nobody. There's no point in trying to be a great man if your death leaves somebody mourning and hungry," she said.

"Agni's blood, you're a grim one," Chan pointed out.

"My friends have a tendency to rub off on me," she said. "So we need to get closer to those airships. I'm fairly confident I can..."

The next words were erased from the air, as a blast tore through the atmosphere. She looked away from it, but she could tell even from the vast distance that it was somewhat comparable to the feat of destruction she had leveled upon the isle off of Pulse. The blast knocked Chan from his feet, and almost did likewise with Azula, but she managed to stagger a few steps away from the blast, which now rained down from the sky like the sky was weeping fire. She blinked for a few moments, then tapped on her ear, trying to dislodge a strong, ringing sound that had entered there. She grabbed Chan's arm and hauled him to his feet.

"Never mind," Azula said succinctly. "We go with the original plan."

Chan looked mildly baffled by what had just happened, but that made him easier to herd along. She moved through the streets, toward that spot she had noticed almost a half our previous, to the one bit of her plan she knew beyond all shadow of a doubt would work. If she got there in time.

She could blame the ringing in her ears for not hearing them approach.

She felt stone hands slam over hers, and twist, throwing her off her balance. Chan immediate grabbed that stone hand and smashed it against a wall, cracking the bind, but not quite dislodging it. Also, he almost managed to twist her arm out of her socket, but she didn't begrudge him that, because his reflexes were exemplary. She saw the earthbender responsible, and she swept low with her free arm, two fingers leading. Less than half way through her motion, she was interrupted again, as stone slammed over her hand and swept it back. Chan turned, casting out a bolt of flame, which went off course when he was yanked rudely onto his back, and buried up to his shoulders in the thoroughfare. Azula's two hands slammed together, behind her back, and pulled down, as though trying to make her kneel. She refused them the satisfaction.

Injured eyes flitted around. If she could have, she would have put on her spectacles, and had better clarity, but the disguise was much more necessary than visual acuity at the moment. Besides, she could make out where all of the Dai Li were, after a fashion. It also made it much more stark when Jeong Jeong's white-maned form appeared from an intersection of streets ahead. He looked at her, his face pulled into distaste which tugged at those twinned scars on his face.

"I'm very disappointed, Yui," Jeong Jeong said. "Dai Li, kill them."

He turned away, and nothing happened. A smirk appeared on Azula's face, as she took in the expression of the closest Dai Li, and the only one she could make out. It was exasperation. And they did nothing. Finally, the silence grated on the Firemaster, and he turned.

"What are you waiting for? Obey your orders!" Jeong Jeong shouted.

"We do not take orders from you," one Dai Li agent, a middle aged man in the robes of the Cultural Authority, said.

Jeong Jeong scowled. "What is the meaning of this little display? Are you trying to make a point of your loyalty to that cutpurse from the East?"

That agent looked to those others arrayed around the group of three. He shook his head, pulling off the sharp, conical hat. "No. The Dai Li are done. Long Feng is done. We're better off throwing ourselves on the mercy of Beifong at this point."

"This is treason," Jeong Jeong said.

"Yes," he admitted. "It is. Just like everything the Dai Li's done for the last hundred years. It's time that it ends. I'm tired of fighting. Are you?"

There were murmurs of agreement rippling around them all, and Azula's smirk grew into a devilish grin. Jeong Jeong looked like a man about to murder.

"Do not order us again," the man said, and then walked away. The other Dai Li vanished into the surroundings with barely a whisper, and barely a twist of shadow against the architecture. Azula felt the bonds on her hands fall away without a sound. Jeong Jeong turned back to Azula. She made her grin vanish.

"Very well. I'll kill you both myself," he said. He swept his arms through the air, crackling electricity following his fingertips, as he went through that horribly inefficient mudra. The man smiled for a moment. It was a chilling smile. "The only thing better will be when I do this to Azula herself."

"In your wettest dreams," Azula said, that smirk coming to her lips despite herself, but he was already committed. The bolt was flying away. She reached forward her hand, and created that path, exactly as she had learned in Pulse, as she had practiced in Kad Deid. The lightning surged up her fingers, and she guided the bolt down, avoiding her heart, and back up and out. Her fingers pointed surely, accurately, precisely. At the man's own heart.

The look of shock on Jeong Jeong's face would be the last he wore in life.

Chan let out a groan of effort, and his arm erupted from the cobbles of the road. With the added leverage, he was able to slowly work himself back to the surface, albeit looking quite a bit more battered than he had been before. He looked at her, like she was something he didn't know how to classify. Something he wasn't sure whether he should be in awe of, or terrified of. She pondered the proper way to do this, and decided that the young Earth King might well have the most efficient method. She punched the man in the arm quite hard. "Come on. We have a job to do," she commanded. That snapped the soldier back to the present, and he followed her with nary more than a nod.

* * *

Teo wasn't a kind of man to get angry. Anger didn't tend to solve much, and cause a lot more problems. That was why he was so remarkably forgiving of Sokka's little... explosive accident. Sure, it was almost a year's work down the drain, but he didn't doubt that he could make it better, make it more efficient. Hell, if he collaborated with Baihu's sister-in-law, he didn't doubt he could make it a hell of a device, especially since when it came to theory, Zhu Di Baihu was pretty much at the top of whatever field she chose. No, he didn't get angry, instead, he made solutions.

"Douche bag!" Huang cheerfully proclaimed.

"I will not murder my wife. I will not murder my wife," Teo repeated to himself, as a mantra against that crippling anger. What kept him in check is that he knew how hard she was trying to prevent this exact thing from occurring. That, and regicide would not do well for his productive future.

"Papa?" Huang asked. Teo braced for it.

"Yes, Huang?"

The boy pointed his finger, a big grin on his face. "Douche bag!"

There it was.

"I will not murder my wife," Teo repeated. He was getting odd looks, but then again, he was used to that. Considering he spent thirteen of the first sixteen years of his life in a chair on wheels, people just tended to view him oddly. Some patronizingly. Others like he'd done something wrong, like this was a just punishment. There were few things he liked less than just-worlders. He was getting much the same look now, from the royal mandarins.

"Prince consort, I was not aware you were at the front," Guun, one of Toph's generals said.

"Not aware? I had breakfast with you!" Teo said.

"Really?"

"Where is my wife?" Teo asked. "I get handed my son out of the blue and..."

"What do you mean, Prince consort?" Guun asked.

"Stop answering questions with questions. Where is the Earth King?" Teo asked. It grated that he had to refer to her that way. Not because he was a man and supposed to be the more powerful one. He'd given up that sort of thinking when he was a legless kid crawling around the North Air Temple. Instead, because it dehumanized her. It made her an icon, rather than a woman.

"She told us she was returning to her chambers," Guun said, turning away and raising a spyglass to his eye as he took in the battle near the horizon. Teo couldn't claim to know much about warfare, but from the looks of things, Zuko seemed to be winning.

"Take a wild guess where I just came from," Teo said.

Guun turned back, a look of confusion on his face. He shared that look with the other generals. "You don't think..." one of them said.

Guun sighed, then pointed at an unobtrusive young man sitting to one side. One of Toph's Spooks, no less. "The Earth King's larked off again," he said with a tone of weariness. "I guess we should send somebody to 'protect' her."

"Papa?" Huang asked.

"Yes, Huang?"

Huang pointed at Guun. "Douche bag!"

"Yes, he is," Teo answered. "But don't tell your mother."

"Yay!" the child exclaimed.

* * *

If there was a great large-scale planner of works and deeds in all of this world than Long Feng, he had never met such a man. Long Feng had once run the lives of millions, controlled with nary a notion of care the sum populace of Ba Sing Se. He could juggle a hundred little plots and schemes, to keep everybody weak and off balance and at each others' throats, while he got stronger. He could manipulate a loving child to murder his mother as a traitor. So when the totality of the situation hit home, that he had been out played, it was a harsh awakening indeed. He had suffered one such awakening years ago. He had underestimated Azula by a heady margin, and made a point not to do so again.

Because she was as good as he was.

He looked at the West Continent one more time. One last time, quite likely. He had dozens of contingencies. Plans within plans, wheels within wheels, but he also had something else, something he was quite famous for not having; doubt. He could fall back on one of any plans which would sacrifice one part of his nascent Western empire to hold onto the rest. But each plan left him vulnerable in very specific ways. If she had prepared for the contingency he chose, that would be the end of him. So he opted for the last option, and by far the safest. Abandon it all. He was not a man of reckless endeavor; given a prudent but poor course against a risky but rich one, he would always default to prudence. Besides, he might not be young, but he had many years left to him. He was not an old fossil, like Jeong Jeong. Gods, it would be good not to have to work with a... well, a jackass like Jeong Jeong, to be utterly frank. And there was plenty of opportunity for somebody like him. Great Whales was denied to him, since it was obvious that the Empress was siding with Zuko. Why she did, Long Feng couldn't fathom, but that wasn't his problem.

He paused, looking down at the water off the side of the boat. Azul was in the south, now, the waters of its coast still afire from the napalm dropped from the corpses of the airships. A pity that this had to stop. He had big plans for what he could do with Azul. But it was not to be. A small smirk came to his face, regardless. The city of Burning Rock could use somebody like him. A guiding hand from the darkness. See how long it remained a 'Republic City' once he went there. He had started from far less. He would rise again. It was as inevitable as death.

Long Feng turned and nodded to the helmsman. The sails began to roll down, as the anchor chain rattled. Soon, they would be at sea. Let Azula's plans wither on the vine. He would start anew elsewhere. With the two Dai Li flanking him, he descended into the cabin at the back of the ship. He opened the door and stepped into the back-lit room, and was greeted by something shining in that dark. Two somethings.

Long Feng turned, but was brusquely shoved aside as a hulking man drove a brutal kick directly into the chest of one Dai Li agent, before grabbing the other by the collar and slamming him into the ground, fire curling up from his fist. Wait. Chan, son of Chan? What was he...? Long Feng didn't care. He reached back for those shards of obsidian he had collected. But his hand betrayed him, and was pulled wide.

Long Feng glanced up. Rusty chains were bound around one wrist. He switched hands, flicking those brutally sharp stones out with his other hand. The black glass shot toward the face sitting behind the table... only to make an abrupt left turn and slam into the wall. Then, another clatter of metal, and Long Feng's other arm was bound, and he was snared.

And Azula smirked at him. She sat, at his table, leaning forward. Her fingers were tented under her nose, and the light behind her made her glasses flare with light, an impenetrable wall of glass between the world and her soul. Stepping from behind, from the darkness, came a small woman, her clothes very ornate, her green eyes murky. The Earth King herself.

"Man, you got lady-balls, Azula. Just staring down him tryin' to kill you like that?" Beifong shook her head.

"I have a lot of experience with people trying to murder me," Azula answered.

"I just wish he put up more of a fight," the Earth King snarked.

"How?" Long Feng demanded.

"You aren't stupid. You were beaten by me in the past, and that instilled a sense of caution in you. Especially because until me, you had never suffered so serious a setback before. Thus, what I was capable of inflated in your mind. You are a rational person, but even the most rational are prone to exaggeration when denied a chance to think," Azula said. "Being as you are not an idiot, and that you began to overestimate me – not that I'm complaining, mind you – the course became simple."

"Yeah, this is hi-larious."

"I just make you think that I'm just the one step ahead of you that will leave you cautious, and make you cautious enough to do the smartest possible thing. Leave. Refuse to play the game that you know you're going to lose," Azula finished.

"That is very clever," Long Feng admitted. "I have found a worthy opponent. This game is not over, though. You cannot stop me forever, and your friend will only take the least of my tools from my repertoire."

"What friend?" Chan asked from the ground. The other Dai Li tried to get up, so Chan swept out an arm, and a flare of fire kept him down and placid. "Yeah, I thought so."

"The Avatar," Azula said. She tilted her head down, untenting her fingers. The flare of the lens died, and Long Feng could see those penetrating golden eyes lock onto his. "He does not know where you are. Because you are quite correct. If he caught you, he would strip away your earthbending. And we both know that that is the very least of what makes you dangerous. Missus Beifong here was your better as an Earthbender when she was ten. No, I refuse to have you filed away in a prison somewhere, believed useless because you lost your bending abilities. You could scarcely be more dangerous."

"Well put," Long Feng said.

"Everybody in this room disagrees with the Avatar's idealism in this matter," Azula said, leaning back in his chair, and crossing her legs, letting one kick idly past the edge of the table. "I for one intend to end this war quickly, and the best way to do that will be to make the Embiar think that you are running the conflict to your benefit."

"An easy assertion."

"Well, there is one snag," Azula admitted. "You aren't trustworthy enough to leave bound and naked in a walled up section of the Zutara caves under Ba Sing Se. But don't worry. Your orders will still go out. You just won't be the one delivering them."

Long Feng scowled. "You're going to make me a figurehead?"

"Appropriate, considering our relationship since my awakening," Azula said.

"You play this game very well, young woman," Long Feng said.

Azula shook her head. "That is your greatest failing, Long Feng," Azula said.

"What is?"

"You still think this is a game," she answered. "It is deadly serious. My uncle, Iroh, once told my brother and I – after his son died, of course – that he wanted to see an age of peace in the world. I can't say he will, but I know for a fact that it can't happen as long as both of us are still alive."

"We are both necessary evils," Long Feng said.

"Both," Azula stressed. "Not either."

Long Feng frowned.

"Would you like the honors?" Azula asked the firebender standing behind him.

"Hell no. I get first dibs," the Earth King said, cracking her knuckles.

A few minutes later, two prisoners were escorted off of the ship via its skiff.

Long Feng was never seen again. The puffer-sharks fed well that night.

* * *

It was dark. He liked the dark. The dark was always safe for him. Ever since that first fight, when he brought an entire village crumbling into ruins, entirely by accident, the darkness had always been a respite. He had been buried alive for almost a week, surviving on the trickle of rain through the broken stone. It was perhaps then that his mind broke. He knew he was insane. There wasn't anything he could do about it. Since then, the only time Trama could ever be safe, be calm...ish... was when it was dark, and the room was close.

At least he had half of that here. Trama didn't speak as he walked up the spiraling path up to what was once the base of the mightiest spire of the Eastern Air Temple. If he had cared to listen, on his journey here, he would have heard the stories of how the war in the West dragged on, but began to fizzle as foreign involvement became apparent. He might have heard how Great Whales pledged to aid its northern neighbor against the invasion. He might have heard how the Embiar abandoned the army in droves, unwilling to be dupes for some outside power. The fight continued for months, until the end of winter, with spring on the horizon, but in the end, there was nothing more. The West Continent was Fire Nation once more, united and whole.

Trama might have heard all of that, and by all rights should have, considering he came here by way of the Republic City. Burning Rock had been the only thing Zuko lost in the war, and even then, it was hardly much of a loss, according to most. He kept his head down, got away from the crowds as fast as he could, and began walking south. It wasn't far, by any means, but it was blessedly remote. For the first time in his life, he knew that he was safe. Not safe from harm, he was actually more vulnerable than ever. Rather, he was safe to be around. No longer would the slightest twitch of his hands or toes cause untold devastation. It was a relaxing feeling.

"I sensed a troubled soul approaching," a kindly, serene voice came from above. Trama turned the last bend, and found a slender old man with a long white beard sitting lotus at the heart of what was once the Air Nomad's temple. "A soul in desperate need of comfort and clarity. Please, sit with me tonight."

Trama did as he was asked, sitting down and dropping the bindle of his scant possessions on the ground. There was a long silence, as the old man and the young boy listened to the universe.

"Do you know who I am?" the man asked. Trama nodded. Guru Pathik was the sole reason Trama had come. "And you know what it is I could teach you?"

Trama nodded again. "I want to be calm."

Pathik nodded, then reached the gods only knew where and extracted an oddly smelly bowl of something. "Then drink this."

Trama tried, but gagged. Onions and banana-juice were not a cocktail he was used to.

* * *

Calling Long's home humble was quite possibly doing a disservice to the word. It was tiny. But until now, it was everything that he needed and more. But now, with the two of them curled up on opposite sides of the same small mattress, it didn't seem enough. It had been a very long time since he'd seen her. And now, here she was again. He had to admit, there was a time he was a bit enamored of her, but she always had eyes for Jet. Those two had been extremely close for as long as Long had been in the Freedom Fighters, and he could finally understand why.

And now, she was the only one left. Everybody else had moved on. The two of them had been left behind.

He sighed, wiping the sweat from his brow. Here in Omashu, well south of the equator, it was summer, and that meant it was hot. He slept in nothing but pants; it was never a good idea to sleep in less, particularly if one had to wake up in a hurry. Fumbling for pants was a sure way to get an arrow into you while you were vulnerable.

It had been a long time since Long could afford to be vulnerable.

He rolled over. She was curled up away from him. She didn't like taking up too much of the bed, like she was an offense to his senses, or his hospitality. In truth, he was happy to have her. He had often thought about her. To the point, in fact, that he once got a drink thrown at his head by a woman who had been shamelessly flirting with him, with him remaining the whole while oblivious. That had ended... badly. At least her brother didn't require stitches. He didn't go into work for two days after that. He felt... wrong. He couldn't turn it off. And now, he knew he wasn't alone in that.

There was a sound to his side, as he lay on his back. Just a shuddering intake of air. He turned, his dark eyes cutting through the darkness of the mostly full moon. She was shaking. "Are you alright?" he asked.

"Fucking dandy," Bi said, her voice unsteady. Her shoulders shook, and she didn't turn. Long gently reached over and touched her shoulder. She flinched. "What do you want, Shot?" she demanded, still facing away.

"Long," he stressed. It was his name, after all. "Are you crying?"

"No."

Knowing that he was probably going to regret it, he pulled her shoulder, turning her onto her back on the mattress. She was lying. She sobbed almost silently. "Don't..." she said.

Long didn't say a word for the longest time. He just stared at her. How often, four years ago, did he wake up exactly like this? Lay awake staring at the ceiling feeling like he was everything wrong with the world? He looped an arm around her shoulders and gently pulled her to him. "It's not your fault," he said.

"That's bullshit and you know it," Bi said quietly.

"Yeah, it is," Long admitted. "But you're not alone."

Bi didn't have anything to say to that. She just looped her own arm under his, and pulled close. Still almost silent, she wept onto his chest. The morning would come. Life would go on. And they weren't alone anymore. Life would go on.

* * *

**Lesson 3: Capability is not responsibility. Just because you _can_ fight, does not mean you _must_. Anything else is an expectation of mindless self sacrifice on the behalf of anybody with more utility than the least. Each person must pick its own battles, its own goals, and its own path. Just because Azula can fight, or Trama can fight, or Long and Bi can, does not mean they must. There is always another path.**

_Leave a review**.**_


	25. Nothing Golden Lasts III: Goodbye

**While it might seem out of context up here, Kahol is pronounced with that glottal, like the 'ch' in the Hebrew word L'chaim.**

* * *

The sound of children running through the tea-shop was music to Iroh's ears. Well, there was also proper music, but it called to mind a time when he could dream, and the things that he would dream about. The happy days when Lu Ten was still alive, before Ozai corrupted him. The days at the shore he spent with Zuko while the boy was still unwell. It saddened him that he could not have such memories with Azula, but she turned out well in the end. It had just taken her a far longer path to reach that point.

The pair of three-year-old boys seemed quite pleased with themselves, chasing each other around with blunt swords amidst the sparse, early day crowds. The day was far too young to have the traffic the Jasmine Dragon was usually entertaining. Missus Baihu was beaming, as she usually did, watching her twin progeny cause a ruckus and some forgivable property damage. It came as no great surprise that Ty Lee would eventually have twins. Considering that family, the opposite would have been absurd. She and her husband were overseeing the running about of those two proudly. Iroh didn't blame them.

"Mitvahr, put that down," Sokka said. "And stop hitting Tengri, he's not as tough as you."

"He's plen'y tough, dad!" Mitvahr complained, before running off after his twin again, and laughter echoed once more. Iroh took a moment to carefully adjust the photograph which Baihu had taken almost four years earlier, that winter that saw the end of the last international conflict on this planet. Avatar Aang's age of peace had finally come. Iroh had even lived to see it.

"It is good to hear the laughter of children," Iroh said. "It makes all of this worthwhile. All of the struggle and sacrifice and suffering," he let out a relieved sigh. "It is a good time to be alive."

"Yeah, but there's still so much left to do," Sokka said, a distant tone in his voice as he watched the two children rampage. They weren't identical, which made their mother quite happy, but rather seemed like different admixtures of their parents. Mitvahr had his father's eyes but mother's complexion. Tengri was the opposite. They were not the last children to be had. Rather, when peace broke out, families swelled once more. Iroh's line was ending, but in Zuko, he had a spiritual successor. "I mean, Long Feng's gone, and Jeong Jeong, and Ozai and everybody else, but there's always going to be people who are going to stir up trouble."

"Against what? Everybody's happy."

"That is patently impossible, honey," Sokka said. Ty Lee frowned at that.

"Isn't Azula due to visit some time soon?" Ty Lee asked.

"You're not supposed to say that name," Sokka admonished quietly. Indeed. Part of the great deception was that in order to protect Zuko's legitimacy, and to undermine the army which had been levied against him, 'Azula' had to officially be dead. While there was an admittedly vast collection of people – much of the Fire Palace's servants, by way of example – that knew it was false, according to the world at large, Azula died, and Princess Kahol appeared in Great Whales.

"Yeah, but it's weird calling her that. She doesn't look like a Kahol."

"That's the sacrifice she made," Iroh said. "She did so willingly."

"It's been so long since I've seen her," Ty Lee said quietly.

Iroh nodded. It had been long since the group had been together. That picture was a memento of that time. In truth, they didn't look much older now, but that might as well have been in a different age. He moved into the back of the shop, quickly removing a pot from the fire, lest it boil away to nothing. He could bring it out in time. But right now, he just felt tired. Like he could do with a nap.

Iroh sat down on the stool in the back of the shop, and his eyes drifted closed. His visions were gone. They had been used up. He knew what was coming, but not when. It would be his last surprise. He had fulfilled his promises. He had seen the boy he saw as a second son grow into a man any would be proud of. The age of peace had finally come, and his duties were cast aside. He had even chosen his successor as Grand Lotus. He sat in the room outside. Iroh's breathing evened, as he drifted into a dreamless nap. Then, his breath stilled, as he went far, far beyond.

They found him almost a half hour later. The Dragon of the West had finally fallen.

* * *

Queen Bei tapped her foot with impatience, as the craftsman milled around under her gaze. It was bad enough that their shoddy craftsmanship had failed her at an inopportune time, it was made worse by the slow response by the man called in to restore it. She almost thought that there was some sort of conspiracy on the part of King Gong to keep her in discomfort. Of course, that might just be paranoia. She had become quite a paranoid woman in the last few years. Ever since Long Feng vanished, his Dai Li bending knee in droves to Beifong, or else vanishing into the darkness completely, she had found herself isolated and cut off. Well, she had to admit, there were far worse ways to be cut off than as the queen of a city-state.

"Are you going to fix my bed or just stare at it?" she demanded. The man, a quite handsome fellow, she had to admit, turned to her with a highly expressive look. She could almost see him asking 'do you want me to fix it at all?' in that look. He then returned to his task. An entire tiring day of negotiations for an armistice with Omashu, and as soon as she tries to get some sleep, her bed's leg snaps and she's sent out along the floor.

"Not tonight," he said. "Not a miracle worker."

He was a man of few words. That worked for her. The woman who had become Bi Bei admitted that she indulged in a fair amount of hedonism, when it became apparent that her previous goals were now utterly out of her reach. There was no returning to Ba Sing Se, save for at Beifong's pleasure, and there was about a sugar-cube's chance in hell of that happening. A sultry smile came to her face. He might have big ears, but they suited him. She sidled a bit closer. "Well, maybe I could share yours?"

"Not interested," he said simply. She scowled at that. Who wouldn't be interested? Sure, she was in her middle years, but she was still well capable of children, let alone distant from spinsterhood. And she had it on good authority that she was quite the looker. She had to be nowadays. She had nobody else to depend on. In Three Hills, she was utterly alone.

"Really?" she asked. "And why not?"

"I can have it done by tomorrow afternoon," he said simply.

"Tomorrow? Just put a leg under it."

"The frame's rotten. Needs a rebuild," he answered. "Tomorrow."

The Queen grumbled to herself. "Very well. And I assume you'll be charging an outrageous amount?"

"No charge," he said, turning and walking toward the door. "Already getting payment."

"And what would that be?" the Queen asked. The carpenter opened the door, and there was somebody else outside. It was a woman, obviously enough, but an odd looking one. She was possessed of a wide, froggish mouth and limp, lusterless hair, and a body-shape more at home on a pear than a grown woman. And she was looking at the Queen like she was owed money.

"Is this the bitch?" that rude individual asked. "Doesn't look like much, Longshot."

The man shot her a look.

"Yeah, I know. You don't need to yell," she muttered. Yell? Was she insane? She stepped into the room with total disregard to propriety and tact, looking the Queen up and down. "Gotta say, I'd hoped they'd picked somebody a bit less reedy, but Long Feng was a bit of a twit..."

"I beg your pardon?" the Queen said, scandalized. Well, showing herself as scandalized. In truth, she was very, very wary.

"Oh, I haven't introduced myself yet, have I?" she got a wry smirk on her face, and bowed in a fashion which had been driven into the Queen's muscle memory as soon as it was certain that she'd been selected for this role. It was a manner, so precise and elegant, that could never leave the mind completely, never be forgotten, whether one wanted to or not. It was a bow of royalty to her lessers. "I'm Bi Bei," the woman said. "Daughter of King Jiang, third in line for the throne. The woman you're claiming to be."

"That is a heady charge to make," the Queen said, making sure not to take a step backward. "And a preposterous one."

"Yeah, well, like an old friend's mother liked to say, the difference between reality and fiction was that fiction has to make sense," the woman said, wiping her nose with the heel of her hand. While there were some traits which the Queen could instantly recognize as royalty, they had obviously been tempered by years living wild. That face ought to have been a dead giveaway. Jiang's nickname had always been 'the Toad' after all.

The Queen's brows drew down. "Let me guess what this is all about. You assume that by murdering me, you can assume your former station and reclaim your nation? Well, I must tell you, things will not be so simple."

"Kill ya?" Bi asked. She then scoffed. "Please. I ain't a ruler, not by any stretch of the imagination. I just wanted to know that Three Hills was in good hands. Sadly, it's in yours, but hell, there could be far worse."

"So why did you...?"

"Three Hills has the Queen it needs for the moment," Bi cut her off. "Don't betray that trust. I haven't killed anybody in years, and I would very much like that to continue, but my homeland has suffered enough. Don't make it fall again."

The Queen stared at the woman. Bi stared back. Long fiddled with a clock at the back of the room until a piece snapped off, which he silently pocketed. "Is that all?"

"Yeah," Bi said, backing toward the door. "Don't fuck this up. I've got my eye on you."

"So many do," the Queen muttered. Long pulled the door shut behind the two of them, leaving the Queen in her gilded cage of status and society. Forever lost were the streets of Ba Sing Se. So she would do as she had always done, as she intended to do even without that threat; she would carry on, and make the best of what she had.

Her brow rose. Perhaps the delegation from the South Water Tribe could be found? One of the ambassador's aides was unbelieveably handsome. A smile grew on her face, as she plotted out how to catch Nurik's attention, and what would follow after it.

She might not be the perfect Queen for Three Hills, but she was the best that it got.

* * *

The slicing sound hit the air as the knife bit deep, peeling back that epiderm and revealing what lay beneath it. Its contents actually made the woman who still in her own mind called herself Azula release a grunt of alarm, before reaching up and replacing the blade back into a notch which she had slowly created over years. It was a bad habit, leaving a letter-opener embedded in the higher portion of the table, but it was the only way she could be sure that small hands would not easily grasp it.

"What is it?" Ked asked, not looking up from the manual he was scribing. It was hardly strange, that once she finally ran out of things to do, he suddenly got busy. Life had an odd sort of humor about it.

"Uncle Iroh has died," Azula said.

"Who's Unka Iroh?" the little girl sitting on her father's knee asked.

"The tea-man, Mimi," Azula said distractedly. She could only imagine how hard it was for Misato, having to grow up with four names. She would have only called her her proper name, but Ked immediately latched onto the nickname and none else, and worse than that, because Fire Nation names were hardly in style, she had to have an Adamite and a Whalesh name as well. Depending on the company, the child was either Mimi, Misato, Anwen with the locals, and Nava with the Adamites. "I doubt you remember him."

"When's he gonna come back?" Mimi asked.

"Likely never. He's dead," Azula said.

"So he's not going to visit me?" she looked a bit upset at that.

"Correct," Azula said. It was tiring, but she had a habit of reasking the same question every concievable way before accepting it was answered. There were some days when Azula simply wanted to strangle her. And whenever that impulse occurred, she was known to vanish from all sight for the rest of the day, opting to sit under a very cold waterfall, shivering as she tried to purge that malignant thought from her mind. For all she had been a mother for three years and more, she still felt extremely uncomfortable around children. Even her own.

And more the irony, since her belly was once again betraying that another was on the way.

"Do you think he'll be surprised if we visit him?" Mimi asked.

"I severely doubt it," Azula said. She got to her feet.

"Oh? I didn't think you were close," Ked said, noting her rise.

"Not as close as he was with Zuzu, but I still owe him my presence at his funeral," Azula said.

"We're goin' to a party?" Mimi asked, brightening visibly. She was an odd mixture of Ked's features and her own, her complexion closer to Ked, but her eyes the bright, clear gold of Azula's line. Her hair was black, but wavy, her build strong, but somewhat pudgy.

"It's a funeral," Azula pointed out.

"So it's a fun party?" Mimi asked. Agni's blood, it was like talking to Ty Lee, only worse. As soon as Misato moved beyond two word sentences, it was nothing but a barrage of questions. "'cause-'cause-'cause it's got the word 'fun' right in it!"

Azula turned to her consort. He shrugged. "I can't help you with this one," he said. He should consider himself quiet lucky that she loved him, otherwise the beating he would receive would have been legendary.

"I'm going to arrange for the trip. I assume you'll be coming?" Ked smiled at that, then turned down to the book again, his pen scratching along. Mimi jumped up and ran over, tackle-hugging Azula's legs, her face mushed against the woman's thigh. When she did so, Azula went absolutely rigid for a moment.

"C'mon, Mama! Up!" Mimi implored. Azula took a calming breath and scooped her daughter up. Sooner or later, she'd stop being so nervous around the child. Maybe. Azula turned to Ked.

"Aren't you going to come?"

"Between you and your mother? Not likely," he said lightly, a smirk on his face. A legendary beating, make no mistake.

Shaking her head, Azula departed from the large, wooden-floored room in the Palas yr Llyswennodd, crossing the great atrium along the loft that overlooked the lower two levels. The whole structure resembled an inverted pyramid of space, each loft slightly smaller than those below it, before flaring wildly on the bottom level, all of it in marble and fine woods. She had memorized its layout when she first came to Kad Deid, before returning that critical time to the Fire Nation. She was a paranoid person when it came to safety. Knowing the way out was paramount. Mimi actually remained silent during that trip, her thumb in her mouth as her big golden eyes took in the building. Mostly because she couldn't see over the railing yet, so she was enjoying the view from on high.

The samurai in their pale grey parted as Azula approached, allowing her to enter the most armored and well defended bedroom in the entire palace. Mother, despite her status as a somewhat powerful firebender, tended to sleep in. Azula thought the nature of the Whalesh was staring to rub off on Ursa. The Empress was barely stirring, letting out a groan and sitting up in her bed, her robes tight around her. "I see you have ejected Jee from your bed again?" Azula noted.

"That is hardly the sort of thing you should be talking about in front of my grandchild," Ursa pointed out, her voice froggy, and her greying hair disheveled. Azula didn't doubt that the man was quite likely hiding under the lumpy covers. It had been a very severe point that the Empress had laid down to the ambassador from the Fire Nation that he was not to 'corrupt Misato's innocence'.

"She's heard worse," Azula dismissed.

"Gramma!" Mimi piped up. "Mama! Down!"

Azula let the child hit the ground and run to her grandmother, feeling a tinge of relief. Yes, children liked to be touched, to be comforted. She just knew that she wasn't the best person for doing that. Ked was much better with Mimi than Azula was. And yet Mimi kept on... hovering around her.

"Hello sweetheart," Ursa said brightly, upon being tackled by the little girl.

"Iroh has died," Azula said, skipping all preamble.

Mother looked up from her granddaughter. "Really?"

"That's all you have to say about it? 'Really'?" she asked.

"The man lied, separated me from my children for years, out of spite," Ursa said. "If he is dead, then good riddance."

Azula smirked at that. "I hadn't known you were so bitter."

Ursa sighed. "I will speak to the Fire Lord. He likely needs a comforting word right now. But I am not going to that man's funeral. He forfeited that right years ago."

"If that is your choice, I will not bother persuading you; it would likely be a waste of time and effort," Azula said.

Azula turned, and took a step away, before remembering what she had almost left without. She turned, and cleared her throat. "Misato?"

"Comin', Mama," the girl said, running to the firebender's side and grabbing several of her fingers with her tiny hand.

"Have you given thought to the offer?" Ursa asked from the bed.

"I have," Azula said. "But we can discuss it when I get back from Ba Sing Se."

"I'm not going to be around forever," Ursa pointed out.

"And that's not the sort of thing you should talk about in front of your granddaughter," Azula said sarcastically as she walked away. She was by all official lines the daughter of Empress Dov, child of Zeruel, which was patently impossible, because Mother had only been married to the man briefly, and not long enough ago to spawn Azula. As the child of the Empress, though, it had given her as much nominal control of the state as she had ever enjoyed as Princess Azula, and probably more, because there was no Ozai to quash her if she showed a glimmer of independent thought.

And she had been offered the throne. Empress of Great Whales. Azula, in charge of one of the great nations of this Earth.

And she wasn't sure if she was ready.

She really had changed.

"Mama, come on! Don't stand in the way!" Misato urged, pulling Azula by those fingers the girl grasped, and hauling the grown woman out of her haze of distraction. The girl was right. There was much to do. Uncle was dead. It was her duty as his family to see him off. It was the least she could do.

* * *

The Avatar stared out at the crowds. Ba Sing Se housed well over a million people when he had first come here. That number had swelled to an even two amidst its three rings in the years after the Weary War. It could rightly claim to be the most populace city in the world, if not the densest one; considering all of the land surrounding it, most people had quite a bit of room to live in. But this day, Ba Sing Se had a quite unusual problem, one never encountered in its thousand years of existence.

Overcrowding.

Milling in the Palace Gardens of the Earth King, like a sea of flesh and blood, stood more than a million souls, all packed together in one place. It was a sight that Aang had never expected he would ever behold. A million. It was a number that he couldn't even hold in his head, now thrust before his eyes. And they were all united in one thing. Mourning the passing of one of the greatest men of a generation. Aang, being a monk first and the Avatar second, wasn't much one to track such caprice of glory and fame, but Iroh was a name which was known throughout the world. And when the world learned of his death, they came, en masse. Easily a third of that crowd were people all the way from the Fire Nation, paying last respects.

"Quite a crowd, Avatar," Azula's voice started him out of his awe and actually had him bring his staff around. When he found himself leveling a weapon at a pregnant woman, he felt a well deserved shard of shame, and blushed, letting the staff tip back to the floor. "Who would have thought my kooky uncle would get such a send off."

"Princess Kahol," Aang said diplomatically. The instant she appeared, Katara's back went up like an angry cat. Azula cast a smug grin at Aang's wife, then turned back to the crowds. "I didn't think you were going to come."

"I might not have been as close to Uncle as Zuzu was, but he was the Dragon of the West. Even if I thought him weak and soft, he was still a hero to the Fire Nation," Azula said. She let out a sigh, and her voice dropped slightly more quiet. "It's a shame I couldn't have known him better."

"I'm just going to... go over there," Katara said, her blue eyes flashing on the firebender. The two women practically hissed at each other as they passed. Spirits and gods, were they always this bad? Or was it their mutual pregnancy bringing out the aggression? Once they passed, Azula returned to a relatively placid appearance. Aang wasn't so naïve as to believe that facade, though. She was just very, very good at keeping what she was thinking to herself. Aang was about to clear his throat and ask a question, when he felt something tug at his hand. He looked down to see golden eyes staring up at him.

"Are you the Avatar?" the little girl asked.

"Yes, yes I am," Aang said.

"Up?"

"Yes, I can fly," Aang answered.

"No, stupid! Up!" she said, her arms up. Azula actually chuckled at that, shaking her head as Aang found himself scooping up her offspring and letting her ride on his shoulders. Ked, at least, was keeping an eye on the girl, always an instant away from grabbing her should she fall. Sokka, was once again milling near the podium stand, but this time, he was not alone. Sokka Baihu's was not the only photographic camera assembled, nor even the most intricate. As an afterthought, he quickly pivoted the device back to the group standing clear of the pyre, the lost hero, and those who had known him best. Aang frowned.

"Sokka, what are you...?" he managed before a bright flash interrupted him, causing him to blink away the glare. His young passenger let out a shout, and he could feel her squirming.

"Mama, he hurt my eyes!" the girl complained.

"You'll get better," Azula said. Glancing back, Aang could see the reason for the shot. Everybody was in it, even Zuko who was just now approaching the foot of the pyre. Sokka quickly returned the camera to facing the podium before the pyre.

"We all heard the terrible news," Zuko said, his soft voice cutting through the din of the million and more like Sokka's Space Sword through paper. All fell silent as he glanced down at the scrolls, his speech, staring back up at him. "Fire Lord Iroh was a great man. A hero not just to the Fire Nation, but to the Earth Kingdoms, and the entire world. His final wishes were to join the flame... and be buried next to his son, just inside the Outer Walls. He does honor to both his bloodline, and to the people he adopted as his own."

Zuko swallowed, his eyes looking up over the masses. Those eyes were damp. A glance to Azula showed that hers weren't, but she had a distracted, distant expression. Maybe she too was wondering why she was not taken by sorrow. Aang didn't know.

"He never hungered for power," Zuko said, his voice wavering. "My fath... my father instead entrusted the nation of his birth to me, believing that I would do the duty justice. He..."

Zuko trailed off, his eyes tightening. Even that burnt eye had lost its glower and contorted in genuine pain, tears slowly leaking out of it. At that, Azula finally moved, taking a step forward. But this time, it was Ked who took her hand, and with a shake of his head, rooted her in place. Of course. Officially, Kahol and Zuko were utterly unrelated. It would seem bizarre if she did something now.

"He was a man too large for this age, too heroic for it," Zuko managed. "And he will be desperately missed. Husband of Shaiu, now passed. Father of Lu Ten, now passed. Father of Zuko. We commend you to the fire from whence we come, to whence we all return."

Toph, actually looking like the Earth King for a change, solemnly lowered a taper into the pyre, and it slowly, almost reverently, spread upward and obscured the departed in quiet, almost soft flames. Everything Aang knew about fires told that this should have been much more aggressive; the entire pyre was dry wood doused in oils. But the fire was low. And it was also blue. A glance to Azula showed that she was concentrating on that pyre, as the flames lazily drifted upward, consuming her uncle and their friend.

Zuko turned and walked away from the pyre. "I couldn't finish the speech," he muttered.

"You said the parts that mattered," his wife said.

"Uncle would not have been ashamed of it," Azula said, favoring him with a glance. Aang felt weight lift from his shoulders as the girl was plucked by her father and set on the ground. Toph actually looked stricken, which was an odd look for her.

"Come on, guys. This place is bumming me out," she said. Aang nodded. It seemed like just for this moment, almost the entire world mourned.

"One second," Sokka said again. Everybody turned back to the podium, but he was already amidst them, a hand on the shoulder of either of his lads, as a second flash went off. Everybody let out a grumble at having been hoodwinked again, and momentarily blinded. Teo looked like he was trying very hard not to curse in front of his son. "Don't worry, that's the last one, I promise."

"It had better be," Azula said, rubbing her eyes behind her spectacles. "The next time you do that, you'll find yourself taking my picture with a cinder."

"Noted," Sokka said evenly. He turned to his sister and hooked his arm over her neck, and the other over Aang's. "So, what's the big day?"

"Not for a while yet," Katara said.

"Have you picked out a name yet?" Mai asked with a cool but genuine note of interest.

"Well, Katara's calling her Sedna if it's a girl," Aang said.

"Really?" Ked asked.

"It's a good name," Katara defended. Ked rolled his eyes.

"And if it's a boy," Aang shrugged. "I figure Tenzin's as good a name as any."

As they walked away, none of them knew the import of that photograph, remaining in the camera. It would be the last time that all of them were in the same place at the same time, for the rest of their lives. One last time, as Sokka would have said, Team Avatar and the A-Team walked together, into an uncertain future, but it would be a future of peace.

Until Republic City, anyway, but that's a different story, for a new Avatar, and a new age.

* * *

**Children of the War IV**

**The War of Flames**

**The End**

* * *

**And that's all she wrote. Story's done. Everybody got the ending they needed, if not the one they wanted. Before you ask, all of Mimi's names mean the same thing, and Azula's Adamite moniker means 'blue', so in essence, it is the same as her old name from a certain point of view. After this, they all went their seperate ways. An age of peace that lasted almost seventy years follows, and then Korra happens. Sokka managed to take the secret of his waterbending to the grave, which he would have regretted; his status of an outstanding non-bender made him a rallying figure in the anti-bending uprisings in Ba Sing Se and Burning Rock, which eventually just renamed itself the Republic City. Zuko's tenure as Fire Lord was ambivilant and divisive. Some loved him, others hated him. He eventually got succeeded by Kimiko, who became one of the most beloved leaders in Fire Nation history. Azula eventually became Empress, and unwittingly creating a dynasty of powerful benders amongst the nobles of Great Whales. Her grandchildren were the last firebenders that the family produced. In Korra's time, Toph's still around, still Earth King, and still badass. Bi and Long never got married, never had children. They didn't dare. But they stayed together until the very end. The years were not kind to the North Water Tribe; bereft of clear succession, a schism formed and the tribe broke apart. The return of the Sun Warriors to the Fire Nation had... mixed results. And under Si Wong, an ancient and vengeful spirit plotted revenge for the destruction it suffered at the hands of mankind.**

**Stories of a different time. Stories of a past age. Stories which can't reasonably be told until the new cartoons arrive.**

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The shore was silent, as the oily waters lapped at the dark grey sand. A sigh hit the air in that unnatural space, between a sea not of water, and a sky of burnished gold. He was an old man, that released that sigh, twice as old as he looked, and only that because he had found a way to cheat his death once. But it seemed that his cheats, his tactics, his schemes, had all run out. Because now, Jeong Jeong sat on the shore of the Sea of Souls.

He turned as an electric zap hit the air, pushing away the low mists, and left in its place a small plot of glass, and a figure which looked like living lightning, its face a featureless wooden mask. Jeong Jeong rose to his feet, facing that thing, and dropped into a firebending stance. Utterly useless though, since bending was denied of the Spirit world. It was a part of the material world, not this one. He knew that for a fact, that stranger. Because he had been one of the ones to make it so.

"What are you?" Jeong Jeong demanded.

"_Don't you recognize an old friend, J.J.?_" it crackled, his voice both electric... and familiar.

"Irukandji?" Jeong Jeong asked. "Bah. Too much to hope that you'd finally gotten killed, I suppose."

"_Please, do you really think anything on these two layers of reality can kill me? There's a reason I'm five times older than the universe; I make it a habit not to be easy to kill,_" despite having no facial features at all, with his face being a wooden mask, Irukandji let his smirk be known.

"You promised me revenge."

_"I promised you a chance to try again,_" Irukandji countered. "_But instead of joining the good guys and wisely staying the hell away from Azula, you got all pissy and swore vengeance. You know, I learned a very important lesson out of this reality. Had a lot of time to think about it as my Uncle/Cousin Koh was peeling off my old face. You want to know what that is, J.J.?_" Jeong Jeong glared. "_It's remarkably simple. Even you could grasp it. 'Don't Fuck With Azula'. Trust me, from now on, any time I make a plan, DFWA is going to be the first thing it gets run against. That's just how big of a fuck-up you are. Right now, up top, she's got a husband and kids, living a happy life. Hell, after the second one's born, she'll even start to enjoy being a mother, take over Great Whales, the whole nine yards. Good for her. Graduated from lunch, she's somebody else's problem._"

"You are a failure of your promises, spirit."

"_Yeah, well, you're a bigger failure than I am,_" he said. There was a flash of an invisible grin. "_Besides, I didn't haul you out of there,_" he said, casting an electric hand toward the Sea of Souls. "_I just wanted to rub it in a little._"

"You sadist beast."

"_Guilty_," Irukandji shrugged. Then, he hauled back and drove his foot up between Jeong Jeong's legs, lifting the ghost hundreds of yards into the air and across distance. Jeong Jeong carefully squirmed in place, until he saw that that ghost fall cleanly into a great stone well, which plunged directly into the Pit of Oblivion. When Jeong Jeong passed that lip, Irukandji's hands flew up as a harsh sound emitted from his body, like a buzzer. "_And IT'S GOOD! Three points for Team Irukandji! Irukandji wins the Superbowl! I'm goin' to Disney World!_"

Irukandji chuckled to itself briefly before letting out an amused sigh, and turning toward the Sea of Souls. "_Hmm_," he pondered. Another invisible smile. "_That will do quite nicely._"

Irukandji reached a hand of solid sparks into that un-water and heaved. Flying out of the tide came the form of somebody almost a decade and a half dead, his body restored from its dust which made the sand, his soul reconstituted from the Sea, his mind from the mists above it. Irukandji dusted off his hands, as Zhao glanced about in abject confusion.

"Where am I? What happened?" the long dead admiral demanded. "The moon! Wait, wh... Damn it, I'm dead, aren't I?"

"_You're actually a lot more astute than J.J. was. I'm impressed_," Irukandji shrugged. "_Well, a little anyway._"

"What do you want?"

"_I want into Canon,_" Irukandji said simply. Zhao just stared at him. "_Y'see, I've been farting around alternate realities, the thousand courses of what-might-have-been, thousands of paths that could never have been, and yet were. I'm getting bored. I want to rekindle my interest in this whole event, so I figure, what better way than to go directly to the source?_"

"And why do you need me?" Zhao asked warily. Smart man.

"_I scoped J.J. the same way I scoped you; after finding a way in following a projectile soul. Lots of people would leap at the opportunity to try things again. Azula did it, and she ended up Fire __Lord. Jeong Jeong did it, and he proved to be an abject failure. I even managed to get Aang to do it once. That was a lot of fun, that one, but I ended up losing part of my soul, so, kind of a push. But Canon? That's a trickier proposition. I can't change anything already there. I know, I've tried. But I can send you between the cracks. Good news, a second chance, bad news, it's not quite the reality you remember._"

"How so?"

"_Lots of little things,_" Irukandji shrugged. "_It won't matter. You won't have your memories._"

"What."

"_Don't worry, you get to keep your personality. Just not your memories, because trust me, they would fuck you up royally. I've got a deal with the Yue in Canon. I can get you dumped off in the North Water Tribe a year after Ozai goes down. The rest is up to you._"

"And once I'm there, what do I need to do?"

"_Do? Nothing. Just show me the way in,_" Irukandji smirked invisibly. "_Take your time, though. I feel a distinct need of a 'vacay'. You know how it goes?_"

"Is this a trick?"

"_The very best kind,_" Irukandji said.

Zhao pondered it, rubbing his chin between his aggressive mutton chop sideburns. "Do it."

"_Already done,_" Irukandji said, and with a flicker of light, Zhao was gone. Irukandji looked with pride as he saw the path into Canon emerge to his senses. "_Huh. Neat, it's a comic strip,_" he pondered. He then turned up, staring out of the screen, and looked at you. "_I know, you're pissed Koh didn't kill me. But believe me, I'm __**just getting started**__._"

He turned away from you, and with another electric flash, the shore of the Sea of Souls became empty, silent, and the mists rolled over the sands once more.


End file.
